


In Time—

by ohdrey89



Series: Deductive Deviations [21]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angry John, Arguing, Awkward Tension, BAMF John, Child Abuse, Child Murder, Crying John, Declarations Of Love, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Life at 221B Baker Street, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evil Mary Morstan, F/M, First Kiss, Frottage, Gay Parents, Gunshot Wounds, Hudders is the best, Johnlock Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Up, Men Crying, Moriarty is Dead, Mutual Masturbation, Mycroft Being Mycroft, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft IS the British Government, Mycroft's Meddling, Neck Kissing, POV Sherlock Holmes, Parental Mrs. Hudson, Past Child Abuse, Pining Sherlock, Poor John, Post-Coital Cuddling, Protective Mycroft, Season 4 predictions, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Sherlock is a good friend, Subtle Johnlock, Suicidal Thoughts, Sulking Sherlock, Unresolved Emotional Tension, War, a bit - Freeform, in sherlock's mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-16 04:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5814949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohdrey89/pseuds/ohdrey89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Mary and Sherlock is ready for life to continue on... If only John wouldn't spend every conceivable moment trying to ruin it all with divorces and women. In Time, he would see just how perfect things would be if only he would Just Stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Time—

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a one shot, but it had another chapter in there. So instead of posting that as a separate one shot and starting a new little miniseries, I just decided to make this a multi-chapter story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock sees how it could be. Once they move past the whole Mary fiasco. Things at 221b could continue on quite nicely.
> 
> ———
> 
>  _Sherlock wished he could say that John’s return back to 221b was easy._  
> 
>  
> 
> _He wished it was as easy as the exhale after holding your breath. A release, a euphoric release. But it wasn’t like that at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm still writing Fighting Gravity, I swear. I was spending a lot of time on Tumblr, and it gave me ideas. All that crowd-sourcing man. 
> 
> I will finish this next chapter and post it soon, promise. But console yourselves with this for now. You can smell the johnlock in the air, it's wafting through the flat. Just take a deep breath and enjoy.
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

———

Sherlock wished he could say that John’s return back to 221b was easy.

He wished it was as easy as the exhale after holding your breath. A release, a euphoric release. But it wasn’t like that at all.

Initially, that’s what John’s moving back in felt like. Like Sherlock has been holding his breath through the whole of John’s marriage, since he came back to London and found out eighteen agonizing months was all it took for John to build a life for himself that didn’t revolve around the spaces Sherlock occupied. He spent the time with Baker Street seemingly on pause waiting for the shoe to drop. And it did, in spectacular fashion.

———

Sherlock held onto his breath and waited. For John to find out what Mary Watson really was, _liar_. It had been so much worse than just A.G.RA., he could have never seen such a deep betrayal after Mary Morstan and everything Mary had built with John being based on a lie. Even he hadn’t seen that one coming, as they stood before Moran — standing in for Moriarty in his death — after they tracked him down, and the gun that Mary had pointed at the man alongside John shifted, and the gun sight was instead pointed at her husband.

Sherlock remembered his vision narrowing to a pinprick of desperate fury.

“ _Think very carefully about what you’re going to do next, Mary._ ” Sherlock had warned her, his baritone voice growling out furiously through the yawning spaces between his ribs while his heart pounded in desperate fear. And watched the woman that claimed to love John as she stared at John, her husband, who refused to take his eyes off his mark but for a second and looked to see the gun trained on himself, the silencer barrel pointed at his temple at point blank range. She wouldn’t miss, if she pulled the trigger, this time she wouldn’t miss. “ _Mary…_ ” Sherlock tried to warn her again. Ready and willing to take another bullet to protect John. He took a step in Mary’s direction and found Moran’s gun pointing at him instead.

“ _Ah, ah, I may not be Jim but I’m observant enough. Don’t move, Mr. Holmes. We don’t want things to get ugly._ ” Moran warned. They were at a standoff. No one moving, and no one willing to concede.

“ _Why?_ ” Sherlock heard John’s pained voice cut through the air and wished, he could look to the doctor to give the man some sort of comfort. “ _After all we’ve been through Mary, why are you doing this?_ ” John had questioned, desperate to put an end to Moriarty and his legacy for good.

“ _Oh John,_ ” Mary laughed at her husband unkindly, her loving tolerant mask falling. “ _I wish I could say that I was sorry about this. But—God! You’re so annoyingly pathetic it was getting hard to tolerate you. I’m glad you found out like this. You see. I was working for Moriarty the whole time._ ” Sherlock could see it. The laser sights at the pool. “ _It was all planned from the very beginning. How we met._ ” Bumping into John at his frequented Tesco’s, wondering why he had never seen her before, just as he was starting to try to get back to normal after Sherlock’s jump from the roof and providing John the perfect opportunity. “ _My being a nurse. Needing a job, and you wanting to start your own practice._ ” Running into her at the interview after he had forgotten to get her name and number at the Tesco’s and then there she was again as if by magic. “ _It was all planned, and perfected as a way to flush him out and bring him back to London. But he didn’t know about me did he? He wasn’t planning on you finding me._ ” Now John could see, now he could see Mary for what she really was and just how deeply she lied to him. “ _I got too deep, and by the time he came back to London, from the dead,_ ” she scoffed at the ridiculous idea that Sherlock had been dead. Imagine her surprise to find her mark right in front of her face as John was trying to propose, “ _it was too late. Everything went as Moriarty had planned; a contingency upon his forced suicide and I got too deep._ ” Mary lifted one shoulder casually as if she had had no other choice but go through with the whole farce. “ _It was easier than I thought, and I had help keeping you right where I wanted you—Thanks for that by the way. I thought once you found out about my not being Mary Morstan you’d leave me, but Sherlock thought he was helping the both of us. And he was—in a way._ ” Mary’s mouth had lifted in a snide smirk at the thought that she hadn’t even had to plead with John to take her back, Sherlock talked John into that himself. It made her job so much easier.

“ _What about the baby? Our child._ ” John agonized. He had just been trying to live a normal civilian life after the war, and twice people reached out to him to upset that. Sherlock couldn’t help his eyes closing in pain at that. He had been so blinded by Mary being a part of their duo and fitting in so seamlessly, being Uncle Sherlock, that he had missed all of that entirely.

“ _A mistake— an unforeseeable miscalculation. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be avoided. You can have the brat once it’s due. I won’t get rid of it if you want it. But— It’s over, I can’t do it anymore._ ” She sneered looking to John as if he were something to get rid of, a tumor, an abscess, an annoyance. “ _I want a divorce._ ” Mary called out into the windy air on top of the rooftop.

Sherlock waited for something, anything to happen. Then he saw the men swoop in, masked, nameless. They restrained Moran, slapping cuffs on him and he saw the sniper lasers cover Mary’s chest, stomach and head. _“I would point that weapon away from Doctor Watson if I were you Mary, though we both know that’s not who you are._ ” Mycroft. Meddling again, and he’d never tell his brother, but this is the first time he could ever recall being exceptionally grateful for it. “ _It’s not often I can find a person who can so easily handle my brother and I would frankly not want something detrimental to happen to him, so if you wouldn’t mind._ ” Mycroft held his hand out and then accepted the gun Mary placed in it. He handed it to the man at his elbow and stood there between the three of them as Mary was cuffed as well, looking regretfully upon the scene.

Sherlock and John had stayed up on that rooftop long after the men had removed their marks. Only turning away when John had wiped his face and turned away from it with a firm, certain nod. Acceptance.

Sherlock followed behind him. In silence, to the flat he had shared with her to pack a bag and they went back to Baker Street. In silence.

Silence seemed best.

———

Well.

Seeing him back in the flat, in his robe after a shower. In the kitchen, in his pajamas, soft with the last dregs of sleep going away with the last few swallows of his morning tea. Watching John tapping away at the same frustrating fifteen words per minute of hunt and peck. That was the easy part. If he just deleted the middle bits in which Mary existed, if they both could, Sherlock could imagine it was like John never left. Sherlock thought that the natural flow of their life here could just continue.

He pictured it all when he heard the footsteps up 221b. John’s definitely. Though they were heavier than they should be. Oh yes, that’s right. Today was the divorce proceedings. Mycroft even offered John use of a legal team he would employ. A small price to pay for protecting his little brother and suffering under one of Moriarty’s schemes. A scheme neither Holmes brother had foreseen. They were still wondering how Mary had slipped under their radar. The Holmes’s were nothing if not thorough. John almost refused Mycroft’s interference except for Sherlock’s insistence. For once, Sherlock begged him to reconsider and that was what convinced John to accept the favor. Even though the lawyers had probably cost more than John could make in a year, no probably ten years. Under the care of Mycroft’s lawyers, he wouldn’t have to speak. He wouldn’t even have to be present if he chose not to be. But ever the soldier, he would face Mary, whoever Mary was — only Mycroft really knew — and fight for custody of his child head on. That soldier had gone once again into battle.

That explained the wailing cries emanating from below, with Mrs. Hudson then. She does love to dote on babies. The consummate Nana. He won full custody. Good. Just as deduced, and it could have hardly happened otherwise. Wise of the courts not leave a vulnerable child with a highly-trained assassin, even if she is the mother. Besides, John would never know the judge ruling upon the matter was a friend of a colleague of Mycroft’s. Mycroft had arranged for that one to take place as well. Sherlock allows himself to peel away from the couch where he had been thinking and went to make tea as John’s burdened steps continue to climb up. Tea. John would need tea.

He hears the last two shuffles of John coming to a halt in the doorway.

“Sit. I’m making tea. You could probably use it after today.” Sherlock announces gesturing with a wave of his hand to John’s chair. Tea and creature comforts. That would fix the hard set of John’s mouth and the straightness of his back. There was no need to think of the divorce or Mary now that it was over. “How did it go?” Still supposedly it was polite to ask.

“See you haven’t stirred since I left.” John scoffs taking in Sherlock’s familiar blue dressing gown and pajamas. An agonizingly lazy day with no cases or experiments to amuse calls for pajamas and sulking. “Fine, ta for asking. Just like Mycroft said. I didn’t even have to be there. The lawyers—Mycroft’s cronies. They knew everything without having to speak to me and did all the work. Mary only looked at me once when she told the judge about my PTSD. It was like Mary was a completely different person. Like she had despised me from the very beginning. Lucky for me, the lawyers had evidence that I was fully capable to be the baby’s father. Seeing a therapist and all that, a signed letter from her even stating that I was more than prepared for being a father. I signed the papers and left with baby Anna in my arms before I even had a chance to breathe. Don’t even have to pay the bitch alimony.” John shrugs off his coat with forced movements and hangs it up, standing in the kitchen giving Sherlock a thunderous look.

“So? What’s the problem?” Sherlock asks his eyes still trained on the two mugs to watch the tea bags steeping, calculating the time with his internal clock.

“Mycroft was there. After. To tell me something very interesting. And me with my arms full of baby.” John huffs an angry wrong sort of laugh, looking to Sherlock now practically brimming with anger.

“Well what did he have to say?” This prompting was really getting tedious.

“Had a file all ready for my perusal— Just in case, I— you know, might want to read about just what the type of person Mary was when I married her. And why she had needed to build a life with me in order to hide, what Moriarty had on her that coerced her into doing it. But I wondered how he could have known, to be there on that rooftop waiting when we got there.” John gives him another look with his brows lifted, waiting for an explanation.

Sherlock puts the tea cups down onto the kitchen table. Clean for once, free of debris and lab equipment. John always likes seeing that when he walks into the flat after facing something hard or tiring, his doctor likes cleanliness. “I might have asked him to look into Mary’s background.” A concession. Yes, he did. But only after he knew Mary wasn’t _Mary_.

“How long? How long had you known?”

“That she was a high-ranking assassin? Well, not really until she came to us about Magnussen.” Sherlock stumbles over the words thinking that was what John wanted to hear, another lift of his brow. A half smirk, enjoying Sherlock’s nerves, only this time it’s accompanied with a lick of his lips.

“ _Oh!_ Well to be fair— I didn’t know, not really, not in truth. Mycroft warned me, though I thought he was being overly paranoid. He thought I was being _sentimental,_ ” the word comes out in a sneer because once against big brother proved to be right and it’s a hateful admission, “and I had our suspicions confirmed when she turned her gun on you.” His hands are twisted in front of him, contrite.

“Y-You—”

Sherlock watches John’s jaws work against one another grinding, eating the words he doesn’t want to say. Like he’s ready to shout but doesn’t want to disturb Anna who is quiet downstairs. “John, please—” Sherlock wished he could say begging was a new sensation. He just wanted for them to move past this. They could. All they needed was time. They had lots of it. They would have forever if John would only get past this little minute detail and _see_.

“You _knew_.” It comes out choked, wrong. John’s emotions have been wrung out and he looks beaten, defeated. He clearly couldn’t take much more of this. The letdown. “You knew.” A harsh angry intake, a rage sniff. “For how long Sherlock? HOW LONG?!” Anna’s cries knifed through the tense air of the kitchen, and Sherlock can’t believe how hard it was to breathe.

“Since the night I came back.” Sherlock turns his gaze away then. He had deduced it, truth.

“The whole time?!” John’s staring at him, filled with betrayal. Disbelief. It won’t be the last time. But not for something apparently so vital.

“I was doing what I thought was right! I get yelled at for letting my deductions flow freely all the time, and the one time I think I’m doing the right thing by not saying anything you want to agonize over. Please, for the sake of the world at large. Make up your mind!!” Sherlock sweeps by John, righteous, indignant. Putting the mugs down in their perspective places by John’s chair and his own. Sitting down with a flourish. John looks at him with an incredulous scoff. “It’s not as if you were talking to me when I first came back either! You’re my best friend. What was I supposed to do once we apologized? Have the first words out of my mouth be ‘oh yes John, so glad we’re on speaking terms again. By the way I don’t really like that fiancée of yours. Oh why you ask? Because she’s a liar and quite possibly an assassin?’ That would have gone over well.” Sherlock muttered derisively. It’s met with an angry twist of John’s lip. “Oh and I just could have imagined what I would have said after coming off the tarmac high on cocaine, ‘oh and just wanted you to know I believe your wife, the mother of your child might be in league with Moriarty.’ Please John, I may be reckless but I do have some sense of self-preservation.” If this was what would make John leave for good, Sherlock would let him. There’s a distinct sick twist in his gut at that thought.

“So once again it’s all my fault!” John gestured to himself with angry sweep of his arms around the flat. Remembering the night of the fight then, the thumb drive, A.G.RA., Magnussen.

“No! No. I didn’t say that. You did.” Sherlock sips his tea for lack a better way to occupy his eyes with something other than taking in the miserable curve John’s spine has taken. When he chooses to look back up, John is bent over his chair, fists digging into the cushioned back. Sherlock crosses the room; he feels this is important, needing to touch. He pulls at John’s wrist, calloused violin-worn fingers wrapping around it. Pulling his fists away from the chair. Feeling John’s thundering blood pressure. “I stepped back. I didn’t tell you. Because for once I didn’t want to interfere. You’re my friend, and you were—” A pause. He doesn’t know if he could admit what he had seen in John while not in Baker Street. In truth, while he wasn’t with Sherlock.

“Were what?” John’s mouth is turned down as he looks into the impossible irises of his best friend with his warm, blue ones.

“—happy. I didn’t want to ruin that. For once, I did what you would have done. I was trying to be kind.” John shakes his head miserably, knowing Sherlock never speaks like this, for the benefit of someone else. They both know he’s a selfish creature. The old Sherlock would have rather broken up their relationship with his deductions from the start to have kept John at 221b and keep things the way he liked them. But that’s not the Sherlock that came back from taking down Moriarty’s web. Sherlock reaches down to grab onto John in a desperate embrace, as the tears well up in the doctor’s eyes. “I’m only sorry that it didn’t work out and ended like it did. You deserve better.” Sherlock feels John’s hands come up to fist into his dressing gown, clinging to the scaffolding of his own frame that Sherlock’s built to support him.

“Thank you.” It’s said both in gratefulness and an apology against his shoulder. John’s suffered cruelly. But it’s over, and he can move on. With a sigh, John pulls back and Sherlock sees the weight he came home with is gone. Sherlock smiles a satisfied smile, as John gives him a tired one with an equally tired sigh. It’s been a long day. But there’s no rest for the new father. Now, they would never have to mention the whole saga again.

“Well. Now that that’s out of the way. I want to meet my niece. Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock goes over to the open door, where he can hear the woman cooing over the baby. Not fair, it was his turn. He was the only one who should be giving Anna his undivided attention. “Bring up our new little addition. It’s time I met her.” He watches John take a heavy seat in his chair and Sherlock gives his friend a satisfied smirk.

Now they could move past this. Maybe not right away. But in time. In time he would see, what they could be here at Baker Street. Solving crimes, being father and uncle to little Anna. It all made for a rather lovely picture.

In time. John would see. In time.

———

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That came to me and I really liked how it came out. I just like the idea of Mary being a contingency plan for Moriarty to control Sherlock's life from beyond the grave. One last hurt before they got rid of his influence for good. 
> 
> Okay, no more stalling. Now I'll get back to work. 
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


	2. Just Stay—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few months go by and Anna John and Sherlock are able to settle in together. Will they stay happy if John tries to date again? 
> 
> ———
> 
>   _He didn’t want to do this at all, but Sherlock knows this is what John would think he’s supposed to do. What he should do for Anna. And an army man always does his duty. Complete the family picture with a mother and make everything all rosy for Anna’s future. He could understand the sentiment, but— why couldn’t John see? They were fine as they are._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I know, still haven't continued Fighting Gravity, but life being as it is, between my parents and brother being sick, and my parents conceding to dog sitting right after they're feeling better, I had a full plate for a while there. It's in the works. This was just in my head and I had to get it out. It's just a one shot. No worries! I don't intend on ever leaving you guys hanging, even if I did when I was young and on FF.net. I promise I won't ever do that on here. 
> 
> This chapter came about from scrolling through Tumblr and my eye getting caught by this lovely fanwork by [ののすけ](http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=5130598)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to whoever you are for inspiring this chapter. I hope you all enjoy it! 
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

———

Sherlock organized himself into his favorite chair in one of his usual impossible configurations. Always surprisingly compact for someone constructed of nothing but gangly limbs. Thinking was always taxing work, and demanded he confine himself to a space that would free him to think. He had on his pajamas, blue robe and his feet were bare. And there was a cup of tea steaming itself upon the side table at his elbow. He has just gotten Anna down for the night. Eight o’clock, and right on schedule. In three hours, she would rise for her late night change. In that time, he could get far and stopping to feed her would be little trouble at all. If she fussed, he would play his violin and continue his thinking while his violin eased her back to sleep. He didn’t honestly know what parents could possibly fuss about, this baby rearing was really quite easy if you bothered to pay attention to the patterns. But people do rarely observe.

The latest case he and John had finished needed cataloguing, not to mention the unsuspected melting of his last experiment. The ramifications of that would definitely need going over, to find out what had created such a reaction. That last one had almost taken out the kitchen table for good. Luckily, Mrs. Hudson had been looking after Anna that day so that he could work on the toxic chemicals without John going on one of his rants about babies and suitable environments for raising his child, or something like that. Sherlock had blocked most of it. The last time he had been working it was a simple observation of coagulated blood samples and nothing that could melt, burn or catch on fire. Besides, she was still an infant, barely able to even grab onto the bottle as she was fed and still months away from walking. He tried to imagine it now. The baby barely had any hair on her head. She would probably have little curls by then. Her face making all sorts of curious, funny, and wondrous expressions while she could barely make more expressions than a smile here and there and that frustrated face she made when she needed to poop. He could see her though, holding onto John’s seemingly giant fingers… No. No she would be holding onto his own fingers; they would look gargantuan. Long branches for her to grab onto. She would be grasping on them with all her might and it wouldn’t feel like anything at all. Her hips would swing about in an effort to find her balance. Her feet unsteady, barely balanced, crooked and askew. And then she would look to her father as he came in from working the clinic. A hard day at work it would be too, but that would be just the thing to lift his spirits. Anna learning to walk. Sherlock would make sure to time it just right. So that John would be able to see her do it, just like that. Sherlock felt the corners of his mouth turn up, the smile on John’s face that day would be worth it. As he would reach out to her with his hands outstretched, his deep blue eyes misty. He would let go and let her stumble to him, so that he could scoop her up into a great big hug she would be able to answer back. And then he would kiss John— would he? Best not think upon that yet. Foolish. John has barely let things get back to normal. Letting Mary’s hateful presence cloud his mind for far longer than necessary. But just maybe, could they? Couldn’t it just be him, John and Anna? A kiss from John would be the best way to celebrate Anna finally being able to walk. Then he’d have to talk to Mrs. Hudson about renting out 221c for his lab. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it. Most of his money was going towards Anna in the end anyway. Yes, just the three of them in 221b, it made for the perfect picture really. What would make it even better inside his mind palace, would be to plan out his lab in 221c. He’d be able to have a true lab, once he worked out on storing the mold growing there and finally solve the damp problem.

Footsteps came down from the bedroom upstairs, loud and thumping. Anna’s crib was stationed undisturbed from her father’s footsteps in Sherlock’s room. He hardly slept at normal hours, so it made sense in the end, even though it took some arguing with John. He didn’t want it to seem strange. But once again Sherlock’s logic had ruled out.

“What are you smiling about?” John. He was wearing shoes. Sherlock cracked an eye to see John all dressed at eight in the evening. Shaven. His flirting jeans on. He was going out, on a date? What for? He almost never went out after Anna was asleep. The baby slept on, unconcerned that her father was making noise, seemingly in a hurry to be somewhere.

“Hmm. Nothing in particular. I was picturing Anna as she gets older and starts to walk.” Sherlock couldn’t help the wistful smile he felt in his cheeks. A similar smile echoed in John’s face.

“Don’t rush it, mate.” John’s brow furled in that way it always does when he gets uncertain. “I hope she won’t yet. Not too soon, I’m still getting used to her being able to smile.” John joked, grabbing his nicer leather coat. He only wore that coat when he knew there would be press to take prictures after a successful case, Sherlock asked him to manipulate a witness, or… yes, definitely a date.

“Where are you going?” Sherlock felt his fingers digging into the forgiving leather on the arms of his chair.

“On a date.” John confirmed, pouring himself a quick tea from the electric kettle, as the water was hot and fresh from the cuppa he himself had just made, before going out.

“With who?” Sherlock looked to John accusingly. Or at least John would notice it if he didn’t obsessively check his hair in the mirror above the fireplace.

“A friend of the Stamfords’,” John did catch the raise of his eyebrow in question. “Her name is Nina, divorced, but looking to start a family. I’ve met her a few times, she’s attractive. Seemed like a good time as any to get my feet wet again.” John explained with a too cheerful smile. Forced. He didn’t want to do this at all, but Sherlock knows this is what John would think he’s supposed to do. What he should do for Anna. And an army man always does his duty. Complete the family picture with a mother and make everything all rosy for Anna’s future. He could understand the sentiment, but— why couldn’t John see? They were fine as they are.

“Do you have to? You’ll hate it.” Sherlock has always had a particular skill for predicting John’s reactions to his dates before he would even head out of the flat. Most of the time he would be right. But there is a sinking feeling about it all this time. He’s familiar with this girl, has always been curious about her though the chemistry hasn’t ever been there. To see John fall into the trap set by society of settling and making yourself the picture of a happy family, as an excuse of providing stability and a wholesome foundation for your child to grow up into a confident individual. It hardly ever worked, and Sherlock knew the truth. Trying to create those happy little pictures often does more damage than it helps. She would gain more from growing up in what John always viewed as chaos here, at home, in 221b. He was never meant for what people considered normal, secular. The typical nuclear family. It almost made Sherlock sick at the thought. People always tried so hard to make everything around them abnormally perfect, why bother? It was all so boring and beige. Why did John feel the need to try to do that now? How much did Anna change things around here really?

“I may hate it, but I have to get out there again. If not for myself, then for Anna. She deserves to have a happy, stable home life.” John explained. Sherlock snarled at the patronizing tone in John’s voice. Once again, John wasn’t listening. Sherlock stood up from his place in his chair to flop miserably onto the sofa. His usual sulk, facing the wall, curled up into a ball. This time his sulk was for a very valid reason. It was all nonsense. What stability would John find for Anna out there that she couldn’t find here?

“Fine go on!” Sherlock waved miserably in what he hoped was vaguely the direction of the door. He stretched out until his feet settled into the other arm of the sofa. He was always partial to a sofa the could contain his gangly height in such a neat fashion. A rarity with his experiences in most furniture.

“Sherlock—” As usual, apologetic even though he never knew what he was apologizing for, so typical of the doctor. Sherlock heard the inevitable sigh from near the door. Sherlock heard John’s feet turn and then turn back, he did look to John this time. “Look, I know you like having Anna around and I appreciate how much you care about her but she needs— She should have every chance at a normal life, a life I never had after my mom died. Even before that, and I want to give that to her. But I am grateful. For everything you’ve done. I don’t know what I would have done these last few months without you. Really, Sherlock. I mean it. You’ve tolerated a lot, you’ve taken care of Anna, and you’ve been the best uncle too her, practically another father. And I— I just never expected you to be so good to her, to us, coming back in here and turning your living situation upside down. It’s a lot to ask of you, and well— Thanks.” Sherlock lifted his hand in the inevitable wave of dismissal. He told John to stop apologizing all the time, especially when Anna was down recently with colic and neither of them could get her to sleep for a week straight without the help of Mrs. Hudson. John never had to thank him for doing what he loved to do. It was his Anna, John’s daughter and his niece. She wasn’t a burden in any way. And neither was John, he told the man repeatedly that he preferred them here. He didn’t know how much longer he had to repeat himself before John understood. John smiled and huffed out a laugh, turning to leave the flat again. His hesitation to go should have been enough proof to John that he wasn’t really as ready as he was trying to convince himself of being. “I’ll be back later, ta for watching Anna as always.”

Sherlock didn’t know when his feet even moved, but he heard the latch upon the door release and the hinges creak open, and in the time it took for the dust upon the couch to settle, his hand was slapping the door shut. They both paused as if they had tripped a bomb, as most parents do when a loud noise is made while a baby slept. Anna was used to much worse than that but you never knew what would cause an infant to stir from their sleep. One explosion during a poorly timed experiment and Sherlock hadn’t heard the end of it for a full week every time John had left the flat. Sherlock felt John relax in front of him and he dropped his head until his curls and just very edge of his forehead touched John’s own sandy hair. John tried to open the door again and his other hand came from his side to grasp John’s that had a knuckle white grip upon the knob.

“Sherlock—” John looked back to his friend with a quizzical brow.

“Don’t—” Sherlock begged. “Please don’t— don’t leave.”

“I have to.” John insisted pulling on the door. Sherlock fell further into John’s warmth. He was sure that John could feel his own body warmth through the leather of his jacket. His head fell further until his curls dusted themselves along the top of John’s head.

“No. You don’t.” Sherlock insisted, covering John’s hand even more with his own, trying to stop his fingers from strangling the knob to somehow encourage the door to open under his hand.

“Yeah, I kind of do, I have a date.” John insisted with a confused, disarmed smirk.

“Cancel it.” Sherlock demanded with his usual degree of unbearable inconvenience. He never could make room for others and people with their plans and dates. Well, he never allowed much room for people period. Except John.

“Sherlock wha—? Is there a case?” John questioned, trying to shrug Sherlock off as he molded himself to John’s back, his blue robe falling off his shoulder.

“Forget it, all of it. The women, the dating. Just stay. Stay here, you and Anna. Just stay here forever.” His fingernails dug into the wood on the door as he spoke, bearing everything. He couldn’t hide it anymore, not if it meant keeping John from making another mistake that cost him, them, so much. So much time. So much energy. So much wasted for the sake of not being gay. For being what everyone else in the world expected of the army doctor. For being boring. It really was fatiguing.

“Sherlock…” John growled, looking back at the detective in frustration.

“Don’t you see how they interfere. All those women. They never make you happy.” Sherlock begged John to see what he was trying to explain. “They’re always boring, or annoying, or just intolerable. Watching you go through all of that whole process was intolerable.” The hand on the door turned into a fist.

“What am I supposed to do then?” John’s own hand fisted at his side. Sherlock could tell from where he stood the firm, down-turned frown that set itself on his face in an unhappy line. “How am I supposed to meet a woman, a mother figure, to help raise Anna?”

“She doesn’t need one.” He insisted.

“Of course she does.” John tried to pull on the door again. And almost succeeded until Sherlock pushed it shut.

“No she doesn’t!” Sherlock growled, punching against the door with the soft side of his fist in a thud. He was running out of patience.

“Sherlock—”

“You’re not listening.” Sherlock growled into John’s ear, all petulance.

“I am, and I’m telling you Sherlock that I’m now late for this date. Now let me go.” John attempted at shoving Sherlock away with his shoulders but it didn’t work.

“No!” Sherlock insisted refusing to meet John’s eyes as he looked over his shoulder at his best friend full of ire.

“Why not?” John demanded.

“Because I don’t want you to.” John fumed as the door rattled against their battle of wills.

“Not good enough. Just because you don’t want to meet people you consider insufferable—” John ranted.

“That’s not it!” Sherlock whined, trying to get the man to see what it was he needed, what he wanted from John.

“Then what is it? Explain yourself. And this better be good Sherlock because now I’m really going to be late—”

“Aren’t I good enough?” That gave the doctor pause as he finally loosened the grip he held upon the knob allowing Sherlock to lace his fingers even more with his to encourage the doctor to give in and finally let go.

“What?” John questioned in a stunned whisper.

“Aren’t I a good enough reason? What if I asked you to stay, because it’s what I wanted?” Sherlock crowded John into the little space that was left between their bodies and the door with his weight.

“What do you mean?” There was no way John didn’t see where this was going, his blogger wasn’t that stupid.

“I want you to stay John, stay here. Stay home tonight. Every night. For the rest of — well, for lack of a better term — forever. Stay. And don’t leave. Don’t leave me, again. Forget about the women and Mary, and the space between my fake suicide and you moving back in with Anna. Just pretend it never happened. All of it.” Sherlock insisted letting his nose burying itself into John’s hair, committing the smell to memory, allowing the weight of his head to fall through the man’s hairline until he grazed John’s ear softly, just enough for the doctor to feel it.

“Sherlock—” He felt John’s body stiffen at the touch. Unsure, but not unwilling as he felt the warmth of John press up against him on instinct.

“Just stay and let it be the three of us. Just let us be enough. Please.” He plead his case on a whisper in John’s ear.

“Sherlock, what are you—?”

“I love you.” Sherlock felt his knees buckle under the relief of voicing the pain, the tightness in his chest, the stomach flops, the warmth he had been feeling well up within his chest since he watched John take his wrist, and feel the lack of pulse. Of all the times he had watched John look to him, it would of course be the one moment he couldn’t reach back and comfort John, that he would realize that he was in fact in love with the man he considered his one and only friend. And now he was saying it out loud. His arms came around the doctor, though the man was still stiff. Now if the doctor wanted to, he could just shake Sherlock off and leave. But his arms were desperate to hold the one thing in his life that he considered most precious other than Anna. He didn’t know if it was shock or if he was appalled that John held himself so stiffly, but Sherlock brought the man into his embrace anyway. “I love you, John.” He caressed the skin of John’s neck behind the ear he was speaking into ever so gently, barely anything at all. If he tried anything further, he was afraid the “not gay” man would bolt on him and head for the hills. “And I love Anna, so much. As if she were my own. She is, and I want you both. Nothing would make me happier than if you would just—” Sherlock sighed against John’s neck, raising goosebumps on the man’s skin. “—stop all of it, the dating, looking for a woman, and just stay, stay here. We could be so happy here, just the three of us, if you just stay.” Sherlock’s hands dug into John’s stomach and just on the edge of his ribs where he could feel the heart beneath it hammering away sure and true. His own heart was flutter against its cage trying to work its way out with nerves. Was it too soon? Had he taken this too far? Should he have just let well enough alone? But here in this moment with John wrapped up in his arms, it was the tipping point. He either took this step or watch John beat himself to death with the endless stream of faceless women trying to find something that could exist in their flat right now.

The tension on the door released. And Sherlock felt John relax into his embrace. “Alright.” John finally conceded looking back to Sherlock with a soft smile. “I’ll stay in tonight.” John agreed, reaching out where Sherlock’s hands laid and interlacing them with his own. Sherlock sighed against John’s ear in relief and flattened the man against the door with a grind of his hips. So that he could feel just how much Sherlock wanted him through his jeans. That got a moan out of John in response.

“And the next night?” Sherlock asked as he sucked kisses into the skin of John’s neck. Another moan with a growl chaser.

“All the nights. Forever. Promise.” John chuckled using what little leverage he had under Sherlock’s limpet body to turn until their lips met. The angle was sloppy and it could barely be anything more than chaste, but who would care when it was John that initiated their first kiss?

“John!” Sherlock cried as he ground himself into whatever part of John he could grind against. His hip, Sherlock moaned as John used his distraction to turn the rest of the way around and kiss Sherlock good and proper. There wasn’t a day that went by that Sherlock didn’t frustrate the hell out of him, but there also wasn’t a day that went by that the doctor didn’t pause to think about those impossibly lush lips of Sherlock’s with that cupid’s bow pouty bottom lip that when in a pout begged to be sucked. John did just that, and more as he commanded the upper hand over Sherlock with his more advanced kissing skills.

Sherlock kissed back eagerly. There was nothing boring in this. He could never be bored of the doctor if being physical was always going to be this good and just get better. He would never be bored. Not now, not ever.

John ended the kiss and didn’t need to smile so smugly just because he caused Sherlock to whine with impatience as he backed off.

“Since I’m staying in, I’m going to go get out of these clothes and into something a little more comfortable and I have to call Nina and cancel. Why don’t you get comfortable and when I get down I’ll cook up a stir fry for dinner?” John questioned with a small, knowing smile. It admittedly took Sherlock a few seconds to reboot and focus on what John had asked him. He had gone offline a little bit there. It wasn’t entirely his fault, he was more than a little aware, now more than ever, why John had the reputation of “Three-Continents Watson.”

“Alright.” Sherlock agreed, and John watched his impossible friend, flatmate, and now officially unofficial boyfriend make his way to the couch and resume his thinking position. And Sherlock sighed in contentment as he listened to John climb back up the stairs to cancel that rubbish date and change back into his pajamas.

Yes, this was how things should be. John, Anna and he, together forever in 221b. He wondered if he could get Mrs. Hudson to babysit for a week so that he and John might have a bit of a vacation and he could romance John into getting married. It wouldn’t take much convincing. Even if some would consider it a bit more than a little not good. But that would be fine with him.

———

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! I think? *shrug* Who knows? There might be something else there. We'll see. I just picture Sherlock sinking further and further into John, like a human pile of mush because that's the best way for him to get attention from John when he's like that. I hope you all enjoyed it! My friend said I was glowing while I was writing part of this chapter while we facetimed but I don't think that she's ever seen my face while I write. Apparently, I glow. 
> 
> Let me know what you're all thinking! 
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


	3. Don't Cry—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything between them settles into the life it was supposed to be, what Sherlock has wanted all along. As Anna grows, John is overwhelmed by all of it. 
> 
> ———
> 
> _From a very early age, John Watson was taught not to cry. The world had made him hard._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I had finished this, but when I tried to go back to writing all my other stuff, this comes out. I swear. All the painfully beautiful things on tumblr have been inspiring. So I hope you're happy with what this came out as and I'll go back to work now.
> 
> I was kind of pointing towards this anyway, in my head but it wasn't until I saw this: 
> 
> By the great [twelfthpanda](http://thetwelfthpanda.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Check out her great stuff. And this picture of John, stubbornly not crying, while Sherlock cries his heart out just got me in the heart place and in the plotbunnies.
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

———

From a very early age, John Watson was taught not to cry. The world had made him hard. His mother had realized that he was a sensitive boy, always wanted things to be fair and right. When his sister would abandon him for playing with the other kids her age, he was forced to play with the dimmer, strange kids that would be mean to him, and the smallest slight on the playground would send him into sobbing tears when the adults didn’t do anything, but most of all he hated bullies.

_“Big boys don’t cry, sweetie.”_

She had said to him with a sad sort of smile, as she smoothed back his wild fringe, as if she had known. While she patiently taped up his scraped knees after the bullies had pushed him into the gravel. Big boys meant something. He hadn’t known what then.

He still remembered to this day the way the tears had overflowed when his father had come home drunk and was a bastard to his mother. The first time he had ever witnessed another man hit a woman. He had pulled on his father’s arm until his father had spanked him instead.

_“I’ll give you something to cry about, you sissy mama’s boy.”_

The voice rang through his head every time tears now threatened to fall.

From that night on, he learned to swallow against the lump in his throat, to blink away the tears in his eyes. To clear his throat whenever he lost his voice when talking to the people he loved, trying to tell them all how he felt. The more he did it the easier it became to just not cry at all. Instead he replaced the tears with anger. Sometimes it was even easier for him to just replace the tears with a cold hard stare, people would be even more affected by that than by the tears they had been waiting for. It’s always harder for people to accept that you can’t be hurt by them.

After his mum died, after his sister went off to Uni to drink herself stupid, it was easy for him to turn his back on his childhood and head to a world away from the life he had known and trade it in for the churning sands and howling winds of the desert. Here he watched men twice his size be brought down to infancy by bullet wounds and watching their mates die in battle. Shell-shocked colonels sobbing uncontrollably hours after a battle, hysterical and inconsolable. He offered what comfort he could but he still couldn’t make the tears come. Not there, of all places. When he had to keep his head on straight, that was not the place for tears.

The tears wouldn’t even come when the bullet tore through his shoulder.

_“You’re one tough patient man.”_

The doctors at the hospital would brag. He didn’t know if there was anything to brag about but he would just force a smile and go back to the physical therapy. Not even when he looked down the wrong end of his gun could he force the tears, as he tried to eat it. Contemplating suicide couldn’t even force the wetness to gather in them.

John Watson couldn’t cry.

He couldn’t even make the tears came when he wanted them to, when Sherlock fell. He had tried. He talked it out with Ella until his throat with so raw he could no longer speak. That was the moment John remembered he had wanted the tears to come the most, when he had lost everything that made him feel alive. When the mad detective that had swept into his dull grey life and gave it a vibrancy that made it hard to breathe, had given purpose and vitality again, took it all away from him and it had been so easily snuffed out when he watched Sherlock jump from that roof.

Not even when Sherlock came back. Not even when Sherlock had told him how much he loved John.

So he didn’t understand why now he felt the wetness on his cheeks, the tears wavering at the edge of his vision as he watched this little round soft thing take her first steps. He watched Anna smile wide and sure as she stumbled forward holding onto Sherlock’s fingers like a monkey holds onto branches. Little pink onsie with polka dot skirt shuddering with every unsure step she takes, feet slapping against the hardwood and the sound making her giggle. He didn’t understand why the tears seem to fall as if he had never not cried before. They’re automatic and completely out of control as Sherlock backs away from her to allow Anna to show her Daddy that it’s something she can do all on her own. Just as she’s about to fall he scoops her up and sobs into her sweet smelling hair.

“I knew we could time it just right, Anna, just as her Daddy came home from work.” Sherlock smiles kissing first Anna’s hair and then his. John’s too busy kissing Anna’s cheeks, despite her voracious protests, to kiss his lover right now. They did time it right, he can still smell the clinical smell of the surgery on his clothes. He hears then that everything has gone quiet and he looks up to Sherlock and he realizes he can barely see Sherlock in his vision right now. The tears haven’t stopped, they’ve gotten worse.

“John? Are you alright?” He can barely make out Sherlock’s concerned features.

“I—I—” He can’t speak, so instead he just buries his face back into Anna’s little neck. He can’t tell his lover how proud he is of every little moment that Anna grows taller, stronger, that they see how brilliant of a child she really is going to be. He can’t speak about how indescribably happy he is and how it crushes his chest until he can’t breathe, and it comes out as tears instead. But most of all he’s just filled with so much love, love he’s never felt before, not for his family not for anyone else. Love that he’s saved just the two of them, Sherlock and Anna, right here, in this moment.

Sherlock simply smiles, understanding. He can’t seem to stop the tears either. He’ll find himself crying when he least expects it, but unlike John he was never not allowed to cry. Spoiled rotten, his mother’s little boy, Sherlock was allowed to cry over the slightest little thing just to get his way. When his great brain learned that tears were also the best way to manipulate people, force confessions and information out of witnesses, to get what he needs. And no one ever told him no. But now the tears were sincere. He would easily be overcome at the tiniest realization of how lucky and how perfect everything around him was, and how he didn’t think he deserved it.

“John, you’re getting the baby wet.” Sherlock joked. John did manage to laugh at that but he couldn’t stop the tears but did let go of the baby so that she could wriggle out his grasp and was caught by Sherlock before she could scamper away. When he looks back up after putting Anna back in her play pen, John is gone to the bedroom. Sherlock starts dinner and they don’t say anything, when he comes back out to eat with a resigned expression that is free of signs that he had even cried to begin with.

It’s easier that way. Emotions are always easier to quench when no one speaks of them.

Sherlock does say something when he looks up from the kitchen table not long after that episode. He’s experimenting on a quiet Saturday while Anna is seated next to him – nothing flammable or easily digestible within her reach, they’ve had a fight about that one several times – and they discuss his theories. Whenever Anna babbles her brand of baby talk next to him, he confirms her talk with his own insights. It’s cute enough that John will stand at the sink, mug of tea in his hand and watch the both of them.

“Wuh?” Sherlock looks up at Anna’s sudden question. It’s plaintive, and worried. Emotions she’s never expressed before. When Sherlock looks away from his microscope he sees what’s wrong. John’s watching them. But he’s crying again.

“Yes, John, what’s wrong?” Sherlock questions. John looks up confused.

“W-What?” John questions looking to them both and seeing he’s caught once again, tears falling as if he were a child again. His throat is constricted and crying is so painful, but that just makes the tears fall even more.

“Anna said ‘wuh’ that clearly means she’s concerned about what’s wrong with Daddy.” Sherlock explains as if with his all-knowing deductions extrapolating all that from ‘wuh’ is child’s play.

“Bah— Da— Wuh!” Anna announces looking from Sherlock to John as if they could tell her exactly what was going on and if she should be crying too.

“See John, she’s concerned. Are you alright?” Sherlock gets up and goes to John’s side, experiment abandoned.

“I-I’m fine.” John tries and barely gets it out around a sob that threatens to come out of his throat and tries to push his way past his exceptionally tall boyfriend that towers over him.

“You’re clearly not.” John tries to push away from Sherlock as arms come around him.

“S-Sherlock, let me—” He tries weakly to shake off the arms that lock him against the chest of his lover, his best friend, the man’s heart beating strong and sure. It’s like a dam breaks. And John does his best to stifle the sobs welling up inside him.

“It’s alright, John.” Sherlock encourages in soothing tones. The warm hand on the back of his head pushing him into the strong comforting shoulder where John’s head always fits perfectly while they nap on the couch around Anna’s nap times. When it moves to his back to rub soothing circles. It’s too much, much too much. It comes rushing out of him, gushing forth like hitting oil. He sobs, openly. Sherlock just rocks him, patiently whispering things into his ears he can’t possibly make sense of, and his knees go weak. His bad leg can’t support him while he’s like this. Sherlock just crouches on the kitchen floor with him, never letting go.

He doesn’t have to explain a thing. Never has to explain anything to Sherlock. He’s openly sobbing, large great quaking sobs like a child would. He’s crying for everything, for all the times he had wanted to cry and couldn’t, for his mother, for the times his father hit him, for the fall, for losing what he had with Mary, for all the years he resisted having this with Sherlock stubbornly pronouncing how “not gay” he was. But what the hell did it matter when he could have had this? And he’s crying for right now in this moment when everything is just so right, so fragile and perfect. For how much love fills his heart and makes his chest ache.

Sherlock lets John go until they get interrupted by a loud creak of a high chair and an indignant squawk from Anna. Her arms are outstretched and she’s reaching for the both of them, cheeks ruddy out of frustration, for one of them to come get her so that she can know what’s going on, what’s wrong.

“Here, John, let’s move to the couch.” Sherlock effortlessly moves John over to the couch and then returns the sample he was studying to the fridge and washes his hand before scooping up Anna and bringing her to the couch as well. “I think it’s time we all had a nice nap.” Sherlock announces bottle at the ready. John doesn’t know how he does it. But before he knows what’s happening he’s lying on one side of Sherlock and Anna is on the other. She sleeps and he cries into Sherlock’s shoulder. Eventually the cries peter off, to a tear every now and then. For this John is grateful. Now he’s got a head ache. “Here.” Sherlock has a tissue ready, shifting Anna around so that she snuggles down in between them. Sherlock can kiss John now, and he does. Like he can’t help it. “How do you feel? Better I hope.” Sherlock asks, concern showing in his eyes but a soft small smile turns up the corners of his mouth. John can’t recall a moment he’s ever not loved this man.

“Actually I’m bloody exhausted.” Sherlock merely hums in agreement, like he can tell which he can. John’s voice is shredded and his consonants are slurring together like his brain can’t keep his words together when they come out of his mouth.

“So sleep.” When John tries to protest, eyeing their little sleeping time bomb, Sherlock shushes him. “She’s sleeping. If she wakes up, I’ll manage. Sleep.” He encourages snaking his incredibly long limbs around John and Anna until they’re a tangle of limbs and body heat.

John doesn’t know when he went to sleep. He just remembers closing his eyes and that the blackness takes over, swallows his consciousness and its mercifully dreamless. He stirs only once, when Sherlock wakes up with a whimpering Anna in his arms. Sherlock throws a warm blanket over him and John plunges back into the mire of sleep before he can really stir, and the quilt didn’t help.

———

When he wakes again, Sherlock is curled up around him again, somehow behind him, when he was the one that fell asleep against the back of the couch. Sherlock is snuffling little puffs of air against his neck. The man is wrapped around John like a koala as always. But the press of John’s bladder is urgent. He extricates himself easily enough and comes back from the bathroom to find Sherlock reaching for him, bleary eyed and as needy as ever. The time on the stove had read just passed five-thirty. And he knows by the dusky blue sky coming in from the windows, bathing Sherlock’s exposed pale wrists with it so that he almost looks ethereal, that it’s probably morning. He lets Sherlock pull him down into an embrace that starts as comforting, safe, and ends somewhere nearer to holding promise of something deviant and pleasurable.

“Feeling better now?” Sherlock questions like they were only talking a moment ago, and not hours ago. Picking up their conversation where it left off. Sherlock always has the ability to do that and it always takes John a minute or two to catch up. But it doesn’t now as he nods, working his nose under Sherlock’s jaw to take in the sleepy smells of the remnants of Sherlock’s deodorant, sweat and the dusty couch smell that lingers from sleeping on it. It’s strangely comforting as he nibbles his way up and down that distractingly long column of Sherlock’s pale, pale throat. John can’t help himself really.

It’s early and he should let them sleep, but the baby is down and will be for a good long while and John can’t really help himself, needs this as he pushes Sherlock down into the giving cushions.

John likes to grind his hips into Sherlock’s just to hear the way each gasp will end with a long, drawn out groan, like Sherlock just can’t hold it all in. He’s overwhelmed, and that turns John on, every time he does it. It’s a self-reinforcing loop. Like all of their bad habits work against each other really, only this is a bad habit John isn’t keen on breaking.

When Sherlock answers his thrusts with his hips echoing grind in return, John can’t seem to support his weight under his arms, and falls into Sherlock’s waiting embrace. But that’s fine because now he can tease Sherlock’s nipples, kiss the skin on his abdomen as the flush that started in his face makes its way down. Bite down on Sherlock’s clavicle when the thrusts get desperate.

John can barely wait for the time it takes to take down their pajamas and pants, for the time it takes to wrap his hand around the both of them. He’s rock hard, and Sherlock’s cock throbs with his pulse against John’s skin. They’re both dripping so much the slide is just the right combination to send sparks down his spine. And Sherlock, the devious bastard, catches John’s eye and they both watch as they thrust into their coupled fists. John tries to remember with some left over logic when Sherlock had taken hold of them too but he can’t. So that he’s able to squeeze John’s fist to add to the friction and rub his thumb against the heads of their cocks, just the way he likes, the way John likes.

“J-John!” Sherlock keens, thrusts getting messy and erratic.

“Yeah- Come on, just a little bit—” He can’t finish his sentence because Sherlock’s bitten onto his shoulder as he makes a mess of both of their hands, his shirt and then his stomach that jumps with the aftershocks that curl his toes against John’s calf and roll his eyes into the back of his head. John’s coming with a growl, so hard. His whole body shakes as he spills in three great pulses, makes a mess of Sherlock really. When he looks back down, Sherlock’s gone lax into the couch cushions and smirking up at John, so proud of the disaster they’ve made of his shirt, his skin, just everything. He’s always so proud of being dirty.

John laughs before leaning down to lick it all up, smiling into Sherlock’s stomach as he whines. Ticklish but he loves the little shocks of pleasure that come after they’ve done this and John touches him. He’s oversensitive but so welcoming to all the little kisses licks and nibbles. Anything John gives him, Sherlock will take. John settles down back on top of him and they rub against each other like cats in the lazy endorphin-fueled haze, until they settle down into a doze. Sherlock’s fingers pet through his hair, it’s the only thing moving between them. John’s limbs are heavy as Sherlock pets at him, but he feels lighter than he’s felt in years. “Thank you.” John mutters against Sherlock’s chest.

“Mmm… for what?” Sherlock questions, his fingers go still.

“Just— what you did…” The night before, that morning, for taking care of Anna while he works. Somehow John hopes the thank you encompasses all of it.

“Good?” Sherlock questions meeting John’s eye with a proud gleam in his own. He does like being praised for doing good things that he normally wouldn’t do.

“Very good yeah.” John laughs against Sherlock’s lips and they settle back down. The sun peeks into the window. Somehow time moved on them and its nearer to when Anna likes to stir. They never seem to have enough time for it to just be them for a bit.

But that’s what makes these quiet moments, with their pajamas rumpled, asses out, skin sticking to one another… that’s what makes it all so precious. So for now John just settles back against Sherlock and they can rest until Anna cries, and just let it just be the two of them. Here in their own little world, a bubble protecting them all from the outside world in the dawning morning light.

Just the two of them against the rest of the world. Always.

———

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would say that this is most definitely done now but then it wouldn't be three chapters now instead of two. We'll see what happens, unless any of you other brilliant people out there do stuff to inspire more of my work. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


	4. Please Don't—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time moves forward, and both Sherlock and John struggle with a growing Anna. Will Sherlock be able to keep it all together? 
> 
> ———
> 
>  
> 
> _Time flows, as it usually does. Time isn’t linear but it still passes through 221b and moves life forward. In fact, more than Sherlock would admit is entirely necessary._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM BACK!!!!!! Finally I've been able to break through and get this out to you all! I'm sorry that this took so long and I hope to update more reguarly in the future! I won't keep you long from the story either. I hope you like it! 
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

———

Time flows, as it usually does. Time isn’t linear but it still passes through 221b and moves life forward. In fact, more than Sherlock would admit is entirely necessary. It moves with an intractable trajectory that only has one outcome. Anna growing up, getting older, becoming an independent, confident, adult human being. It shows most in the shadows under John’s eyes and the wrinkles at his eyes that are always increasing, and in how fast Anna is growing. Rattles, highchairs, and mobiles slowly are replaced by push cars and noisy music making toys to encourage standing and so on as Anna moves through the stages of becoming a toddler. Squishy books that barely should be called books at all – just glorified rattles – are soon replaced with proper children’s story books with cardboard covers, and a few thicker books of fairytales that entertain Sherlock long enough to be able to read Anna asleep. Robinson Crusoe, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Hobbit, and Treasure Island, even Grimm’s Fairytales and Alice in Wonderland start to litter the shelves in her room. Yes, somehow in the whirlwind of forward motion and chaos that is Anna in his life and heart, time has moved quicker than Sherlock had intended. He blinked and Anna is old enough to now regularly attend nursery school. 

And Sherlock must stop his heart from clenching around that idea whenever he takes a moment too long to think about it. The tears are easy enough to blink away, but they’ll never soothe that kind of heartache.

“I warned you, love. Don’t rush it.” John had warned him. His throat still constricts when he remembers that first day they had dropped Anna off and Sherlock had been a teary wreck when she cried and refused to go with the caretaker. Her little hands and arms grasped onto him so tightly but felt like nothing at all. He tried to smile and play a brave face but how was he supposed to do ‘what was best for her’ when she cried out as if she was being punished? It was clearly torture for both father and daughter. How was that fair to her or to him? The only thing that had held Sherlock back from getting her was the strong grip John had kept on his hand. It only comforted Sherlock to see the misty wetness in the deep blue of John’s eyes, to know that he felt the same way too. 

His heart still clenches every time Anna waves bye-bye to him with an uncertain pinch in her face that was never there before. He always wonders ‘Why does this need to be part of growing up?’ It’s like eating things you hate, or being forced to swallow the opinion of an idiot you don’t want to listen to because they’re your superior. She knows she _has_ to go and Sherlock knows he _has_ to let her go, but that doesn’t mean either of them have to _like_ it. 

———

Something settles between the couple, a rhythm that Sherlock was certain was there before but now it’s calmer, steadier. An intimacy that is able to reach within Sherlock and calm the raging storms. He doesn’t need to push the outside world away as much because it includes John and Anna. And John seems to have come to acceptance that while, yes, he does like women, he really loves Sherlock. All those innocent touches he would be drawn to naturally bestow on Sherlock come easier now and offer a constant thrum of contentment in Sherlock’s chest, along with displays of affection that often work to derail Sherlock from his thought processes. Because, well, John is there and he can’t ever help himself when it comes to John. He’s moved mountains for the man, and if that isn’t love Sherlock would be hard-pressed to define what they have with any trite, petty platitudes.

They did eventually take time away from Anna long enough to actually have sex in that first bloom of their relationship, when Anna had still been very tiny. Sherlock had planned the trip himself, wanting to woo John. He wanted to prove John his investment in all of it. John had scoffed when he realized why Sherlock had gone out of his way to plan all the romance and candlelight, “you’ve changed Anna’s messy diapers when most people would have run for the hills, if that’s not invested…” 

“But that’s Anna, that’s the easy part.” Sherlock had debated as he drove them through the English countryside to the place he had rented. 

“What about childcare is easy?” John chuckled, smiling as he looked to the passing scenery. Sherlock knew John did like the countryside. Sussex, where he had found the perfect cottage, was tolerable and a drivable distance from London. He could picture the two of them retiring there. If he ever grew tired of solving puzzles. It has a lovely well-tended garden with plenty of flowers that bees favor. He could imagine building hives there. He’d start a bee colony. He looks to John and sees John meeting his eye, with mirrored wistfulness. John naturally reaches out to hold Sherlock’s hand, they hardly ever get time to themselves like this.

“Nothing, you’re right. Taking care of a baby isn’t easy but I love Anna. So that’s what I’m going to do. Take care of her. See. Simple Logic. Easy.” Sherlock smiled in victory over winning the argument, and turned off the car that got them to the cottage and turned to John, not quite able to read the starry expression in the man’s eyes but leaned into brush a kiss across his lips. “We’re here.” 

He wasn’t expecting John to reach in and pull him into such a heated kiss. Sherlock couldn’t help the moan that John brought out of him, they hadn’t had time to do this, and it was like drinking from an oasis after an eternity in the desert. It left the detective staring at the empty car seat until John ushered him into the house himself. Sherlock had been more than a little nervous at the prospect of having to perform the act but John negotiated Sherlock’s lack of experience as only the army doctor could. John is always patient and forever gentle with Sherlock for which he loves the man for, but most especially in this. They took their time and it was blissful. They cuddled in the warmth of the cottage together for about a minute then immediately dressed and left Sussex to get back to Anna. Neither of them were quite ready to part with her it seemed. 

They found the time in the middle of all this furor to get married. Sherlock saw the inevitability of it on John’s face the minute Anna called Sherlock “Daddy!” She had said it as natural as anything. As if she had been speaking it to him the entire time. John knew from that moment that nothing would be better than the three of them as a family. He proposed the following night after Anna went to sleep. They didn’t create a fuss, but put on their best clothes and went down to the courthouse. 

The weight of the ring on Sherlock’s finger now is calming. It takes everything in him not to twiddle with it when he’s nervous. It stands as a reminder like all the actions in his life now are: 

_Be good for John._

John of course was always Dada and it was her first word. Anna had asked Sherlock where Dada was but not in so many words. He replayed the memory often. John had been called into the clinic and came into the nursery to kiss the two of them goodbye, it was a Saturday. Anna had been sleeping. Sherlock was cleaning up her changing table when the front door slammed.

“Dada?” Anna had questioned, looking to Sherlock from her place standing in her crib, fists hanging onto the railing. He had been sure she was sleeping, yet here she was, sprung up in her crib like a jack in the box. 

“Dada had to go to work, honey bee, but he’ll be back later! He has to make all the good people at the clinic feel well again.” Sherlock’s baritone rumbled happily as he reached into the crib to lift the baby into his arms. Her sweet smell was somehow a relief every time he did, as he wormed his nose into her now little curls. Anna sighed in acceptance and they went about their day. Nothing was quite so precious as when she shouted it and stumbled to hug John that night. For Sherlock, the shocked look in John’s eyes was especially priceless. 

These are often the thoughts that comfort Sherlock now when working especially heinous crimes. Like the one he is examining evidence for in 221b’s kitchen. There are evil doers, bullies, and criminals in the world but everything in their little bubble will always be fine. He’s watching the subtle reactions under his microscope to prove his theories about where this abductor and murderer of little children had gone. The dirt sample had been out of place, now he was analyzing the sample here. Now that his lab has taken a permanent home in 221c.

He hears the front door open, perhaps Mrs. Hudson back from the shops. Did she leave for the shops? It’s not the first time there were movements that occurred within the halls of 221 without Sherlock being conscious of them. The door to the lab opens and he thinks perhaps his landlady thought to bring him tea.

He’s not prepared for the stern “Ahem!” that follows. Blinking up from the microscope he looks to see John standing just inside the door with a clearly upset Anna clinging to his trouser leg. 

“Oh! There’s my little bumble bee! Where have you been?!” Sherlock questioned with a broad smile accepting the clinging hug. He wonders why Anna seems so upset. “What happened, my little luv?” Sherlock coos coming through Anna’s now long wavy blonde hair. 

“We could ask you that same thing!” John practically growls at Sherlock causing Anna to cling more. John bites down on further accusations, his jaw working against his anger and corrals Anna up the stairs. It wouldn’t do to have the impending fight that was brewing in front of the baby. “We’ll be upstairs.” John doesn’t say more as he slams the door to the lab shut. Sherlock sits there for a minute. His arms feel bereft of his little girl. He checks the microscope before him for lack of a better thing to do. His experiment proves his theories, and he shoots a quick text off to Lestrade. Unc’a G’eg, as Anna had deemed him. She loves spending a day with Unc’a G’eg and Aunt Molwy. He figures Lestrade can handle things for a bit. Let the police do some actual work for the night. The abductor hasn’t struck again, and there’s nothing more to do until he’s able to get more data to solve what the police can’t do themselves. He’s hoping the lead will find more data without them actually having to wait for the abductor to strike again.

Bringing his mind away from the case has the memories of that morning slamming Sherlock in the gut like a brick. He was on the couch thinking over the case, John had brought him tea. And the doctor had sat down beside him on the couch while Anna continued to eat her oatmeal at the table. John almost never disrupts his thinking, although after Anna, the rules changed, like everything else. Now he remembered the conversation, John’s insistence, his exasperation. He was supposed to pick up Anna from school, and wasn’t supposed to forget. He’s never forgotten before but he forgot today, he was so wrapped up in putting this unknown monster – this black cloud that hung over him – in jail, to protect his own child, that he forgot to actually take care of her. 

He spends an inordinate amount of time putting away what he needs to in the lab. Spends just a bit too long organizing, anything to delay going up those stairs to 221b. He really shouldn’t though, time is not on his side when it comes to John’s anger. He knows from _many_ experiences that sometimes it’s best not to let the man stew over something until after his initial anger has been dealt with. But time alone to ponder would only let his anger fester into something worse, like apathy or resignation.

Sherlock trudges upstairs, coming to a halt just inside the door. Anna is nowhere to be found. Which isn’t exactly surprising, John and he were cantankerous from the start but once Anna came into Baker Street, they made it a policy that she never witnesses their spats or worse their fights. Even if she could hear them, they wouldn’t let her see their anger. He found John easily enough. The man sat at their kitchen table, equipped with steaming mug of tea and reading the newspaper. Though it hurt that he wasn’t in his pajamas and sat still dressed like he was ready to leave for the pub if he needed to get away.

“John—”

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” John demanded in a vaguely angry, yet bored tone. Sherlock felt like a child ready for a scold. It made him feel small, an inadequate partner and father. He didn’t relish the feeling. 

“I was on a—”

“Don’t you dare, Sherlock! Don’t you dare use your work as an excuse!” John’s face shuttered from anger to bitterness. “Your work is important but you agreed— we agreed! Your work is not a get out of jail free card to slack on your responsibilities to Anna —to this family! Not now, not ever!” John fumed. It was like he was waiting for Sherlock to make this mistake. Like he had been always wondering if Sherlock was really and truly serious about being with him and looking after Anna.

“John— Please— Just— Please, just let me explain. It’s not what you think it is!” Sherlock tried to defend his actions. He made a mistake but not for the reasons John is assuming. The details of this case had been torturous to look at now that he was a father. Those victims didn’t matter beyond the data they provided him, in that he was always a sociopath. Able to divorce human sympathy from the cold hard facts, but this time he couldn’t stop seeing little Anna in the pictures of the bodies. Now, he knew why Lestrade always struggled with the cases involving children being a father himself. 

“Well then what is it?!” John demanded in that harsh tone he used when he wanted the genius to get to his point already. He stood to get more water for his tea. He’d be drinking lots of it tonight, he usually did after they argued. He hated fighting with Sherlock, especially with his husband now that they were married. It was draining and he just wanted some solidity from the one place in his life he hoped would never waver. It was tough on the doctor when he felt it did, like now.

He had tried to spare John this, but he knew now it did no good. John had been busy at the clinic; he hadn’t want to wear John’s spirits down with this case too. “It’s about— the case— It involved children John, murdered children. Awful photos, I couldn’t even bring myself to ask for your opinion on the state of the bodies.” Sherlock met his husband’s eye then, looking scared, sickened, and contrite all at once. It softened John’s gaze but the edges were still hard. 

“That’s even less of an excuse and all more reason you should have picked her up from school knowing this maniac is on the loose!” John crossed his arms, un-moving. 

“That’s why I was so distracted John!” Sherlock growled at his partner in frustration. “I was trying to find them, stop them before they kill again!” Sherlock pleaded with John to understand him now. He did watch as John’s arms dropped in resignation, looking around the kitchen sadly. Sherlock’s throat constricted and his vision narrowed as his pulse raced. Something bad was happening.

“Maybe it would be better if I just moved out.” John let out a sigh. John is so tired and he looks it. Everything had been so good lately, but there’s been an edge to the air while he’s been out on his case that he didn’t want to poke at for fear of what he would find. He could see it in John’s eyes now. He was bored, and he had been waiting for Sherlock to mess up and prove him right. Prove them both right, Sherlock would be the one to ruin things in the end. But what did that mean about John’s lack of faith in him? 

Sherlock scrambled, his hands releasing the chair in front of him with a clang as he ran around the kitchen to where John stood. The implacable look in John’s eye created a barrier, keeping Sherlock from reaching out to the normally receptive veteran doctor. He’d do anything— anything to keep his family from falling apart. Now that he had exactly what he wanted, what people liked to call happiness, he didn’t want to give it back. “What? You can’t—” 

“Why shouldn’t I? This could be just the start.” John’s back goes piano wire straight, meeting his husband’s eye with a flippant stare. 

Sherlock has no idea what he’s done to deserve this accusing glare. He feels as if he’s in another life. “The start of what—?” 

“—Of you pushing us away for the work.” Sherlock concedes that before John he might’ve done such a thing. But can’t John see how much he’s changed? How much they’ve grown together as they raised Anna and loved one another?

“I—I— How could you think that of me? Is that what you think— what you expect of me?!” Hadn’t he proven himself already? He was there for Anna through every dirty diaper change, every sniffle, every stomach flu that her vomiting at three in the morning until he got infected and the only one left to care for them was John. Wasn’t that the devoted father John thought he’d never be?

“It’s only going to get harder Sherlock. Not easier.” John shakes his head, unbelieving in the face of Sherlock’s words. It’s a warning. Sherlock isn’t going to get a second chance.

“So is that it John? One time. I have pressing evidence for a case— A child abduction. And you’re ready to end all of this?!” Sherlock glares at John in realization, his features hardening as he looks at his husband. He has to pretend he can’t feel the hollowness inside his chest. “It really is that easy for you.” 

“Easy?! What part about you— about our life is easy?!” John demanded slamming his mug onto the counter, his good army mug. The tea sloshes out. John curses under his breath and grabs a towel to mop up the spill.

He looks up in time to see Sherlock’s expression turn inward to push down the hurt and pain. He knows the look well, he sees it every time Donovan calls him Freak, every time Mycroft slices through his heart with his jibes and barbs. It stabs through John to see himself be the cause of it too. “You were just looking for a reason— any excuse to leave.” 

John’s mouth drops in astonishment at the accusation that he was just waiting to pounce. That he could abuse their relationship, and Sherlock’s part in their relationship like that. “What reason couldn’t I use before? There were plenty before I ever even brought Anna into this flat. The specimens, the experiments—”

Sherlock pulls back, hands fisting at his side. He does his calculations; it has been a while. Between Anna, the clinic and the Work, they’ve both just been too busy. “The sex.” 

John shakes his head derisively. “Fuck you. I would never— ever— Sod it. Sod this.” 

John moves to leave the kitchen, Sherlock jumps in front of him, caging the man with his too long arms. “You’re not leaving this John.” 

John pushes past him. Sherlock is back in front of his husband before he can get the rest of the way around the kitchen table and out of the kitchen. “Get out of my way Sherlock. I need some air.” 

“John—” John tries to push Sherlock aside again. “No! I’m not letting you walk out on this. Hit me if you have to, break the furniture but I’m not letting you walk out of here like this is nothing. Like this one mistake is the deciding factor on whether I want my child or not.” 

“Technically she’s not.” Sherlock takes in a sharp intake of breath, and his face shutters closed. John can see it. He’s only seen that expression a few times he and Mycroft have had particularly nasty fights. The words are out in the ether between them, he can’t take it back. “Sherlock—”

“Exactly.” Sherlock’s calm voice rings out into the space, a stark contrast to his desperation and anger from before.

“Sherlock I didn’t mean—” John wants to call a truce. Before he gets the change to say something even worse and ruin their relationship permanently. This was a small slip, in comparison, that pointed out a large gaffe in their relationship that spoke volumes. 

“No you’re right. She’s not. We’re a family in almost every way but where it counts. We’re a family on your terms. I’m basically just a babysitter that you get to sleep with.” John hisses in pain as Sherlock’s words cut like they were supposed to, hitting their mark. It’s exactly the thoughts John himself had when he was considering whether or not to make Sherlock legally Anna’s other father. “Think about it.” Sherlock tilted his head in curiosity. “Have you? Probably not, but I have. I feel it every time she calls me Daddy, and clings to me like I’m the only thing that can save her from all the mean, bad things out in the world. If something happened to you, I’d have no legal right to her. Maybe you’re right John. Maybe it’s time for you to decide how you want me to be involved.” Sherlock’s never looked so hurt, so different. He turns to leave John willingly then, ignores John calling out to him in the hallway when he closes their bedroom door. John wipes at his face miserably and turns back as he goes through the motions of cleaning up the kitchen to follow his husband. He’s halted only by Anna wanting her dinner. He smiles and Anna pretends not to notice that something very awful is going on in her house.

For the rest of the night, John takes care of Anna and dodges all of her intelligent questions that are more suited to an eight-year-old than a four-year-old, even a precocious one as Anna loves to be. He’s a bad father and placates her from asking questions by indulging her in things he normally wouldn’t on a school night. She was getting too curious for her own good. He puts the little detective-in-training to bed, and John goes into his bedroom that night even more wretched than how he felt that afternoon. Sherlock had left through the bedroom fire escape, only a text let him know that there was another murder. Complete avoidance. That’s when the tears came to John’s eyes. They had always run into danger together, and now Sherlock went out into the cold, damp night to face this hellish case alone.

———

They don’t talk. The rest of the week moves by at a slow, torturous crawl. They go through the motions, for no other reason than to keep Anna’s daily routine as normal as possible. But John and he move through the flat, in silence. Those awkward times that they do manage to be in the space at the same time. The only time either speak is to have uneasy conversation around Anna. It’s an armistice, a stalemate. And 221b stands as their no man’s land. John realizes that Sherlock had been out of 221b on purpose as much as he possibly can, he thinks better at home but was avoiding it now like he didn’t want to be here if it meant the risk of seeing John. Anna always asks where Daddy is, and John can only use the case as an excuse so many times before Anna starts to give him a disbelieving look that reminds him of her mother. It’s another blow after he’s already down. John can’t remember the last time Sherlock came to bed or that they slept together, since before he got this new case. For the rest of the week, John doesn’t sleep. He spends most nights thinking about what Sherlock said, going over their argument and how now he’s suddenly the guilty party as he twirls his wedding band around his fingers. He was so mad at his husband and now the shoe was on the other foot and the man’s right. The only time Sherlock talks to John is texts or notes on the fridge if he has to go in for the case and can’t help with Anna, or on the milk if he’s used it for an experiment. Sherlock actually goes so far as to apologize both to John and Anna that he can’t pick her up or be home to see to her nightly routine. John actually finds it hard to get Anna to settle for bed without Sherlock there. Not even the recordings of his playing on the violin help soothe her. “It’s not the same Dada!!” Anna whines every time he offers, her mood quickly going from being sleepy to over exhausted. He’s exhausted enough that he’s ready to yell at her, he can feel rage like his father’s boiling up in him.

“Dada, where is Daddy?” She keeps asking. John had never noticed this before, how much his husband really helped with the care-taking. Sherlock was right. John was being a bastard again. Trust issues, obvious. Now Anna is suffering for it.

“Daddy’s chasing bad guys!” John smiles. He can feel the unsure tension in his lips, but he notices the worry behind Anna’s eyes. They both have the same worry when Sherlock doesn’t come home. John would much rather he go with Sherlock than the man be alone. He decides then and there that their fight doesn’t outweigh John being out there alongside Sherlock, protecting him. “Hey! How about Nana comes up and sings you to sleep for a while?” 

Anna tilts her head, curious and her curls clinging to her pillow with static. “Why?” 

“Dada was going to go help Daddy and Uncle Greg, make sure Daddy’s okay!” John smiled proudly as her eyes lit up in recognition.

“Okay Dada I like that a lot better.” It was the only way Anna would let him leave her at bed time, and Nana Hudson needs no convincing in looking after the little lamb, as the landlady called her.

Getting the location of the scene they’re at takes no time with Greg, he’s practically begging for John to be there when John asks where they are. Apparently, their fight has Sherlock unusually short tempered with Lestrade’s team. 

Sherlock is deducing one of Lestrade’s lackeys to tears, and he’s a deputy sergeant, when John shows up. John’s presence disturbs Sherlock into silence as he ignores the officer and returns to the body in front of them. John finally reaches the scene and he passes through the throng of officers effortlessly. He joins Sherlock at the body and sees why the normally cold scientist struggled so much with this case. They were all so very small. The tiny body before them grotesquely covered in red stains and he could imagine all of their eyes like this frozen in eternal horrific confusion. “How old?” John questions as he touches a tiny hand with his gloved fingers.

“They vary but usually no older than eight. This one is four.” Sherlock announces clearing his throat as he announces the age of the body in front of them. This is hard on everyone at the site as the case agonizingly presses on. Donovan doesn’t even try to bait Sherlock as she usually would. Lestrade has to continually turn away from the body like he’s trying to keep his stomach down or his mouth from letting out sobs, John isn’t entirely sure which one.

The tension is still there between them, but when John believes no one is looking he takes Sherlock’s hand in his and gives it a reassuring squeeze before letting go. It’s enough. It tells Sherlock all he needs to know— he doesn’t have to do this alone. 

Molly can barely do the autopsies and gets angry at Sherlock when it seems like he’s wasting time trying to find answers where she thinks there will be none. There are children in danger and he’s analyzing environmental leavings. Bits of this and that, things that could be anything and nothing. Sherlock pointedly asks the over emotional pathologist to stop being such a woman and remain a professional and a rational scientist or leave him be. It’s cold even Sherlock’s standards. Then he points out that it might be an impossibility now that she’s pregnant and with Lestrade’s child. Greg’s eyes bug out then. He had been trying to keep his eyes open over his coffee before, but he didn’t need to be kept awake now. Molly is ignited into a fit that has her banging her fists against Sherlock’s chest, until Greg wrests her from the cold detective. He takes her back to her office. They really need to talk anyway. 

That’s when the machines decide to beep and give Sherlock clues as to where this creature might lurk next. He passes along texts to his homeless network and directs John in a direction that might prove fruitful. It doesn’t. Another lead busted and they get back to 221b early in the morning just as the sun turns the sky a dusky pink over the Thames. They’ve been running all night and the tension between has dissipated, replaced by this tentative happiness, born of exhilaration and finally exhaustion. They crash in a heap on the couch as Sherlock goes over his messages from the homeless network. John checks his watch in time to see that it’s time to wake Anna to get ready for school, but thankfully it’s Friday. He looks in on Anna only to find that she and Nana have fallen asleep reading. He snaps a picture to show Sherlock after the case. He wakes them gently and allows Mrs. Hudson to kiss Anna good-morning and begins dressing a fidgety baby that bubbles with questions about her Daddies adventures. He can feel his limbs begging for sleep after the run even though Anna is proving energetic this morning. John begs off work and he pointedly suggests to Sherlock that they both drop Anna off at preschool before they go back to NSY to finish the case. Sherlock agrees. He hates being idle when a lead runs cold. He’s a bloodhound the knows he’s close to the scent. John can feel it too. 

They wave to a reluctant Anna from the door to her preschool. Sherlock watches from the door until he’s assured that she’s safe inside with her teachers. Even goes to the window of her classroom to see her safely playing with her classmates before he lets go, John yanking his hand the whole way. The need to solve this case presses upon the both of them. Even Mycroft has offered what help he could. But this criminal was stealthy, to an alarming degree. To John, it was almost like he was an apparition, a fairy tale, like a mysterious Krampus, lurking in the shadows to kill children in the most alarming fashion.

One lead after another ends up dead but Sherlock can taste the final chase on the air. John can sense his husband’s unease. The killer held to a pattern, it was the only discernible thing about him. All they had to go on, the timeline and the way he kills. Everything else about the man was pure guesswork and Sherlock despises making assumptions. 

Finally, in the lab, Sherlock gets the results he needs and has his homeless network fanned out as thinly as possible. It took very little bribing on their part to get the network to cooperate. No one wants to see little children in danger. The pieces all fit together, they find where the man has been hiding. He uses an abandoned building in Brixton as his hiding space. There he keeps photos of the children he favors, and the ones he already killed. A candle, his only source of light sits on the floor, Sherlock dips his fingers into the wax. Cool enough to touch but warm enough to stick to his fingers. 

“We’ve missed him, by about half an hour… maybe.” Sherlock looks around uncertain as he shakes off the wax. He eyes the pictures pinned to the wall and drops to his knees before them. 

“Sherlock?” John questions going to Sherlock’s side, gripping the detectives shoulder. He points at the next set of pictures. The sick bastard working his way methodically left to right and he’s onto his next target. The next set of pictures are of Anna’s school, and a picture of the back of a little girl’s head. Sherlock and John both know those un-tameable blond curls well enough to have no doubt who his next victim might be. 

They barrel through London, muscled legs burning until they are able to get a cab. They call Lestrade from the cab and can hear the girl’s uncle scrambling to get his officers in action. “We’ll meet you there,” Greg intones on the phone before he kills the line. Sherlock looks out into the London unseeing, his knee bouncing. Neither John or he speak as their fingers weave together in a death grip. John keeps swallowing back against the feeling like he’ll throw up if they don’t get to Anna’s daycare sooner.

When they arrive, the school is dark, and quiet. The only sign of life are the quiet sniffles and cries that echo outside open windows from the inside. The cops have taped off the entire building and stand at every possible exit that doesn’t involve London’s sewers. 

Lestrade sees them and waves them over. “The school is on lockdown. There’s no way to get in and no way for the man to get out unless I radio the headmistress and give her the all clear. We don’t even know if the man is inside.” Lestrade complains, trying to make something positive about this.

“I’m not going to risk Anna’s safety.” Sherlock growls before John can speak. “Either way I’m going in, if for no other reason than to get Anna out of there so she can be safe with me.” Sherlock vows leaving Greg where he stood without another word. John nods in agreement following his husband while Lestrade radios his officers to remain on alert. 

John pulls out his gun but Sherlock stays him. “We don’t know if he is in there. Best not to scare the children.” Sherlock conferred picking the lock on an old back door easily. No alarms even trip on it.

“How did you—?” John breaths the question as they plunge themselves into the dark of the basement.

“Cigarette butts outside the door by the side of the stairwell, the janitor smokes them when he thinks the children aren’t looking and thinks he can simply lock the door when the place is in lock down.” Sherlock huffs in annoyance, he’d give the headmistress a frim lecture on security lapses once this was over. They make their way to Anna’s classroom, and see all of the children cowering in the corner, sniffling in tears behind the teacher. The poor girl holds a bruised and cut face with one hand and protected the rest of the children from harm in the darkened room, only the milky grey light from the rainy, overcast light provides any illumination. Sherlock can’t help but be glad of this, the lack of light in the room might help him. The man stands at attention, his back to the front of the room, where Sherlock and John entered. He turns slowly and reveals what the monster truly looks like and Anna is tapped in the lecher’s arms. He’s at least Sherlock’s height, and at least twice the detective’s size. Sherlock’s wiry and bulk hardly ever works in favor of those that tote it around. Sherlock barely suppresses a shiver a revulsion when he sees sees Anna cradled close to the man. He’s cradling her like a doll, fondly, though his eyes — their expression sick, demented, removed from all sense of reality — tell a different story. It’s then John notices the gun the man has resting at his baby’s temple.

Sherlock goes into a cold rage like John has never seen before. John thinks this will be a stalemate, in which Sherlock or John lays down the distraction so that the other can remove Anna from his arms and somehow render him harmless. If you could ask John what happened, wouldn’t ever be able to recall it, Sherlock moves with the precision and speed of a jungle cat. The man is in a crumbled pile on the floor before John can process anything but his blind panic at seeing his baby girl in danger. John knows he should have reacted with the same surety that Sherlock did, but seeing Anna at the mercy of such evil froze the army captain in place. He vaguely recounts the bullet imbedding itself into the wall behind him. Then he sees Sherlock is peppering Anna’s teary face with kisses and she’s safe. 

Lestrade enters the room then, throwing on the lights in the classroom. He cuffs the guy, pulling him up from the floor forcibly with cold pleasure, reading his practiced speech as a couple of officers help to corral the injured teacher and scared children out of the room. The man being lifted from the floor is bleeding from more places than he should have and John noticed with a wince that Sherlock must have crushed the man’s entire hand with the same force he used to dislocate the elbow, before breaking the arm entirely at a sickening angle. Sherlock paid the murderer no mind as he held Anna as she held him in a death grip around his neck. John notices then that her little fingers are almost white in the desperation to hug her Daddy close. 

“You bastard!” The criminal sputtered blood from his bleeding mouth in Sherlock’s direction as John came to stand beside him shielding both with a protective arm, his eyes flashing dangerously in a way Greg had never seen in the man’s eyes. Lestrade was glad that it was Sherlock and not John that lunged first. Sherlock made sure he felt pain, but John would have made sure he would’ve been dead. Now Greg will get the pleasure of putting the man in jail, with some criminals who owed society quite a few favors and would have no trouble – and with the right incentive – making this guy’s life very miserable for a long time.

“For touching our daughter and the niece of both the best detective inspector in Scotland Yard and a man who is practically the head of the British Government, I will make sure there is a cold place in hell where you will never see the light of day!” Sherlock growled darkly as he hid Anna’s face from looking upon the face of her attacker. With every tear Anna shed into his neck, Sherlock felt himself filling with black rage towards this monster. It wasn’t a feeling he relished. 

John watched his husband and lover, father to his daughter shake with the leavings of the uncontrollable rage that had propelled him. He had moved with such speed and without a thought to his own safety. The Sherlock that John had seen protect his own daughter from danger, the daughter that isn’t even his legally, is cold as steel. Sherlock observes Greg and several other officers escort the murderer to a waiting police car. Only then would Sherlock relax to check over Anna. He finds himself cooing over her, when moments before he was ready to take a scalpel to the murder while he still breathes. The switch almost leaves his head spinning. Her face is ruddy with the sobs that are slowly bubbling out from her throat and his cooing only makes them worse. There’s a small bruise on her neck from the man’s rough hand and he knows John will check it when they get home. He can’t help running his hands over it hoping the man hasn’t injured her throat but for now she appears to be fine. When Sherlock relaxes his grip his little bumble bee when John pulls away his coat to see the bullet wound at Sherlock’s ribs. It’s deep enough that blood is seeping through his shirt and there’s a hole at the back of his Belstaff. “I’m fine.” Sherlock waves away concern at John’s face that’s now gone paper white, stricken with fear. “It’s just a graze nothing more.” It pings against his ribs, a bruise blossoming around the deep gash, trying to tell him that it’s not as ignorable as he wants it to be.

“You are not fine, you daft idiot! You could have been killed.” John crushes Sherlock and Anna to him. It would have taken less than a moment for John to lose everything he holds most precious in his life. Sherlock and Anna. And he had been so petty, threatening to strip Sherlock of this and move out. Stupid, idiot. The thought of losing Sherlock has him fighting for breath as he felt blindly with his hands for Sherlock’s pulse. It’s high from the adrenaline but not thready with shock, and only this allows John to forcibly exhale the breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.

Sherlock tried to shake his head. “That doesn’t matter as long as—”

“If you say as long as Anna and I are fine, I will seriously punch you.” John pulls back to meet Sherlock confused eyes with his deep blue gaze, angry and watery with tears. 

“But—”

“We need you to be safe and sound too, you git!” John huffs a teary laugh before kissing Sherlock mute. “Life doesn’t work right without you in it.” Anna links eyes with her Daddy and nods. Sherlock does coo at that and covers both of their faces with kisses until Lestrade tells them they can go home. John and he head home with Anna in their embrace the whole way back to Baker Street. 

That night, Baker Street is subdued. Anna was put right into bed and only could have soup for supper. She was asleep before she could even finish her bowlful, John and he barely make their way through the stew Mrs. Hudson had brought them. No one had much of an appetite anyway. The case and Anna being in that man’s arms leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of her fathers. Sherlock spends what little energy he has left picking his way through what remains of the case, piecing what he could from what was found at the bastard’s Brixton hovel. There was very little to go on and nothing that Sherlock could have missed, if they hadn’t found those pictures when they did Anna might’ve been dead. His face scrunches up at that, he can only be glad the case ended the way it did. Altogether, Sherlock declares it a success but John doubted he would write it up. John kisses Sherlock’s curls as his head is bowed over the work. Something about the case still troubles him, John knows. If the case were truly successful, his husband would be long passed out in their bed by now and the circles under the man’s eyes give away that this case had been a long one. John turns to the counter to get their mugs of tea, hot and steeped to the perfect flavor. It’s taken three cups but John thinks this is the one he’ll need tonight to finally restore balance. Anna’s safe, Sherlock’s patched up and would be fine, all is right again in the world. When he turns back around a satisfied smile on his face ready to suggest they move to the bedroom, the chaos of case papers lays tucked away in a file folder, and in center of the wood are adoption papers unfolded before him. 

John had been waiting for a free moment to see about the matter himself. “What? How did you—”

“Mycroft—” Sherlock blushes pushing forward the pen for John to sign. He wouldn’t admit that he had Mycroft draw the adoption papers the day after he held Anna in his arms in the hospital, four and a half years ago. It startles him how long time has gone by.

John drops his head in contrition. He turns his watery gaze upon Sherlock. Why had he taken so long being such a bastard to this great man? “I was going to—”

“I know. I know you were going to look into it but I wanted you to know how serious I was about being a father to Anna.” John reaches out to grab Sherlock to him in a rush of emotion. He forgets about Sherlock’s wound. He loosens his grip around Sherlock’s torso until the detective relaxes in relief. “She’s my daughter John. I don’t just want to love her like my own, I want to love her because she is my own.” Legally, properly, in the ways that matter to everyone else, even though in his mind Anna was his own from the beginning. 

“I know.” John pulls Sherlock into a deep kiss that curls the detective’s naked toes into the warm, familiar hardwood under his feet. “Thank you, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock stutters out after he has a chance to reboot. “F-for what?” 

“Loving me, Anna, for wanting to make us a family.” John’s hand has cradled Sherlock’s face and he can’t help the thumb that grazes back and forth along an angular cheekbone. Sherlock can’t help but cling to John’s arm to keep his hand there as he nuzzles into the touch. He had dreaded losing this, every day he dreads it. It would be so easy to prove John’s fears right and push them away just to have the quiet he sometimes misses, but in the darkening evening, with John close like this. He can’t go back to before; he’d never go back. Not when he could have John and Anna like this.

“I don’t know if I should be thanked for being extremely selfish. For getting exactly what I want.” Sherlock ducks his head sheepishly, his hand has been caught in the best cookie jar of all. The one that ends with John in it. They both share a laugh, and another soft kiss in the darkening night. 

“So what do we need to do for the paperwork?” John wondered eyeing the twisting legalese that spills across the page in a mass of incomprehensible mazes.

“Nothing, you only need to sign it and it will be official.” Sherlock shows him the page with the ‘sign here’ tag but another page catches his eye. He lifts the papers into his hands and scans the page. There are a lot of zeros and pound signs on it. Totals add up to more money than John has ever possessed in his life. It’s all under a category marked under the title of Provisions for Anna’s Trust Fund and at the top are a list of conditions Anna must accomplish to meet the demands of receiving the money and how John will control the money instead unless that happens. Even though John would rather not even conceive of the idea, it speaks also of what would happen in the event of Sherlock dying before either of them. All his money, inheritances, investments, every single pound goes to John. He had no idea that the man he married was so wealthy. The Holmes family was wealthier than the royal family. 

“What’s this?” John questioned running his finger down the seemingly endless number of zeros.

“Just some estate things. It just shows all my money going to you and Anna when she’s of age. In the event of my death 221b will be bought and paid for and the money all goes to you with allotments made for Anna’s schooling…” His speech trails off and he looks to John and notices the wistful smile on his face, tears making John’s deep blue eyes sparkle. “Boring stuff really.” 

“Yes, very boring.” John laughs wetly and reaches up to kiss the corner of Sherlock’s mouth.

“Actually Mycroft set aside money as well. When she’s older, Anna will be very well provided for.” Sherlock explained with a shrug. Neither he or Mycroft gave a thought to their status. It was just the way they lived.

John’s eyes bugged out at the idea of Anna having even more money he didn’t know about. “Did he really?” 

“You know Mycroft. And he’s never had a niece before.” They share giggles at Mycroft’s expense, though John did hold sympathy to Anna’s future partners when all the over-protective men in her life watched her begin to date. 

Sherlock turns to the last page and John sees the man’s signature already there. He’s not unobservant to notice the worn creases in the papers either, and the pages are not as white as they should be. Sherlock must have prepared for this since the day Anna was a baby. He hangs his head in shame. What had he been doing with all of that wasted time? The doctor is contrite when he meets Sherlock’s eye. “I’m sorry.” 

“I know.” Sherlock smiles to his silly husband fondly, is always so forgiving of John’s bad temper.

He wants Sherlock to understand, he should have done it from the very beginning. From the very day they were married, they should have had the papers ready to sign. He couldn’t even explain why he didn’t think to consider the adoption sooner. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay John.” Sherlock waves it away as they go about clearing up the kitchen and sitting room to get ready for the weekend. John comes back to the kitchen while Sherlock is going through his papers one more time to reorder them.

John pets back those curls and kisses Sherlock under his jawline. Smiling into it when he hears Sherlock breathe out a gasp. He pulls back petting through the curls and down his husband’s back. “I love you.” 

A soft, quiet smile meets his own in understanding. “Don’t worry I know.” 

“Okay…” John nods in certainty. He reaches for the pen and he signs the papers. As Sherlock says, it’s only a formality. But it matters, it matters to him and to Sherlock, and it adds a solidity to what they have here.

John goes back to their mugs on the counter. He makes a surprised aborted sound when he finds two infinitely long arms wound around his middle and Sherlock’s curls tickling his ear. “I love you John.” Then there’s that clever mouth sucking a deep bruise into his neck, and a hand threading into his to pull him into the bedroom. 

John’s chuckles are answered by Sherlock’s as they echo from the hallway, as the light in the kitchen illuminates the rest of the flat. But that’s alright, sometimes other things are more important. 

———

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's another chapter here that I'm working on so hold tight! I hope I'll get it out to you all soon! Let me know what you think! 
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


	5. Come Back—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John both just want what's best for Anna, but can they both agree on what that is? Before it tears them apart? 
> 
> ———
> 
> _It’s not often his cases coincide with her weekend. Even the criminal class likes having their weekends free. Otherwise it would be irresponsible of him as a parent to let her come out with him on a school night …also— his mind supplies as an afterthought— John would never allow it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter started out at the beginning only fifteen pages long and then I looks back again and it was thirty pages long. Not that any of you who like reading this will mind. 
> 
> Sorry this took so long to get up. I don't think this story is quite over with, its two chapters over where I thought it would be but it's far from over here. Perhaps it will have another two or three chapters. But for now I don't think I will get back to it for a while.
> 
> I hope you enjoy what's here. I'm a bit worried about it but I know its because I've been looking at it for quite a while.
> 
> Disclaimer: We didn't create it, we're not making money from it. But that's not going to stop the ideas from coming, so here we all are anyway. We might as well live.

———

“ _Dammit._ ” Sherlock curses under his breath as he enters a darkened room, surrounded by the sterile walls of cubicles. The carpeted walls dampened the cavernous silence in the manufacturing floor outside the door and, like freshly fallen snow the morning after a blizzard, muted the quiet into a deafening hush. 

Sherlock ducks behind one of the cubicles in the abandoned warehouse. He leans out to check the open aisle between the rows and finds it devoid either the criminal or his own daughter. It’s not like he could see, stealth obviously requires that he not shine his flashlight and without the use of it the rows of cubicles are swallowed by the darkness only a few feet in front of him. 

He was fighting the impulse to be annoyed with Anna and scold her later for it. After all, he had invited her on this outing. It’s not often his cases coincide with her weekend. Even the criminal class likes having their weekends free. Otherwise it would be irresponsible of him as a parent to let her come out with him on a school night …also— his mind supplies as an afterthought— John would never allow it. 

He still can’t believe how old Anna is but she’s only ten years of age. He didn’t know how time had moved forward on him again. There were plenty of cases, so many milestones, he could map them out in his mind palace and replay them on demand, but now they’re here. She’s so tall that she comes up to Sherlock’s diaphragm. She’s so precocious and mature for her age, Sherlock is struck dumb at the ideas she’s able to form when it was only yesterday he was translating her half-formed words for John, able to read her expressions to deduce what she needed. Her perpetually long hair is now forever pulled back into ponytails, buns, braids, and pigtails, all of which Sherlock has spent hours researching how to do. Baby curls have given way to childhood waves, and her blue eyes have gained a certain sharpness to them the other children her age often lack, for which Sherlock can’t help the pride that bubbles inside him at the sight of it. She’s intelligent, observant, precocious, beautiful, and to his mind absolutely perfect. But that of course isn’t an exact science since his evidence is rather subjective. His bumble bee has a detective kit on her always, like her daddy. He gave it to her with pride just this last Christmas. In a few years, he plans on moving onto a lock picking kit. She’s affable like her father, but sharp and quick witted like her daddy. Her fascination with everything Sherlock does only adds to the warm feelings he has as they chase down baddies. It’s like he has a little girl version of John to follow him around. He sometimes forgets how young she really is, until moments like now when he’s crouched behind a cubicle, helpless to reach out to help her. And there’s a panic gnarled in his chest that refuses to allow him to take a full breath.

The darkness is tense, even in the hush offered by the carpeted walls and floors. He curses the lack of knowledge as to where Anna is inside the office maze in relation to the robber they’ve been chasing down. She’s too quick even for her father with his large gait and snuck her way into the maze. He doesn’t doubt her ingenuity and her crafty agility. More than once she hid from him in their flat where he knew all the hiding spaces. But it won’t quell the panicked voices in his mind. Calling for her, while reassuring, wouldn’t bode well for either of them in this moment. The noise chokes in his throat, barely a frustrated whimper in the darkness, and the fear brings a cold sweat to his brow. Sherlock is careful to keep quiet, but he loathes the necessity of it when he just wants to find Anna. 

With practiced eyes, he tries to look for clues, but the darkness is as unforgiving as it was when he first entered the room. His eyes have adjusted but they give nothing away. The idea to scatter inside the maze is brilliant, but he wishes he had told her to do it instead of the little bunny running headlong into the danger of her own accord like John would. She’s exactly like him no matter how many times Sherlock’s husband protests and says he sees the girl’s mother in their daughter. No. Anna’s all John, that Sherlock knows for certain, and his own influence has done much to remove the last traces of Mary’s influence. It’s then that he sees the flicker of a mirror. Anna manages to use the dim reflection of the moon to shine a signal to him. The light can’t penetrate the room as more than a dull rod of light, swallowed up by the darkness, but it’s enough. She’s down the aisle a few rows. Anna uses her hand in front of the moon’s reflection to send a Morse code message that the robber is in the north-east corner. Sherlock can see her. And he knows that if he can see her, the arse their chasing after might, too. He’s just about to create a distraction when he sees her moving. Her little form is crawling in the direction of the bad guy, and Sherlock can’t form a different plan, he knows he must follow her. He also realizes it was a keen calculation on his daughter’s part. The message also flushes the criminal out of his hiding place, because he could see where Anna was as well. Otherwise, they would have been in this stalemate for hours. It’s then he hears what Anna hears, the man is on the move, trying to find her. 

“Dammit.” Sherlock whispers to himself again, looking around for something of use to make a noise. If anything happens to her, John would never allow him to hear the end of it. 

Sherlock can hear the heavy, clomping, booted footfalls of the perpetrator, but no Anna. In a desperate attempt at distraction, Sherlock bangs his foot against a nearby filing cabinet, the cavernous metal shutters and Sherlock curses out loud like he slipped and made a grave error in their stalemate of silence. It works, and the man follows the source of the noise. That’s when the detective sees the trail of marbles roll in his general direction and seconds later the suspect is crashing onto the floor, sending more marbles pinging off cubicle walls. The masked man falls face first, with a groan. Sherlock is on him instantly using the swiped handcuffs from Lestrade he keeps handy, to restrain the bastard. Anna wraps up the guy’s legs with a length of telephone wire she found lying around. He’s very glad that in one of his boredom fits he took pains to instruct Anna how to tie a knot that makes it harder for someone to escape and just like that, the knot in Sherlock’s chest releases and he’s once again able to think around the pinpoint focus of his fear. His breathing slows, and he realizes that they were successful and nothing bad happened to Anna. 

The duo fall onto the subdued baddie with a huff. “Well done!” Sherlock congratulates, and he means it. She’s only ten and already Anna holds much promise in the field of detective work. He had never given a thought to someone taking on his practice after his own demise, a legacy. But the hope is something that blossoms, small and delicate in the soft part of his heart he keeps open for Anna. It’s too soon but the hope is there, fragile though it is, without his permission. Sherlock pulls the cuffs tighter until the man beneath him growls an obscenity. It’s a small satisfaction that he can do that, after the scoundrel wanted to run after Anna. 

“Thanks Daddy.” Anna sighs, plopping onto of the thief’s ribs, smiling wide at the groan the man gives in reply. Sherlock grins proudly, joining her. They use the man as a bench, and it keeps him from getting away. He steals an arm around Anna and pulls her in to kiss her hair, the smell has shifted, no longer flowered with talc and baby powder, but he still smells Anna. Now there’s the faint smell of strawberries from her princess shampoo she couldn’t go without, no matter how atrocious the garishly pink bottle looks cluttering up his bathroom. The man beneath them grumbles and starts blabbing futile threats until Sherlock aims a well-placed knock onto the guy’s head. Now he keeps quiet until finally Donovan and some NSY lackeys find them. Donovan reads the guy his rights while taking him out of the building, the man fighting and grousing the entire way. 

Sherlock and Anna follow in Donovan’s wake, their shoulders back with heads to the wind.

“Can you believe that?! I finally got my Morse Code right!” Anna holds her Daddy’s hand their arms swinging, rattling off the thrilling details of the case at a mile a minute. 

“Mmm! Indeed, you did!” Sherlock rumbles happily tightening his hold on her hand, his little detective is barely paying attention to how her feet are moving and more than once he’s afraid to see her trip on the way out of the warehouse. Just before she trips, Sherlock lifts her and they laugh as he swings her a bit. It never stops amazing Anna how strong her dads are, all other dads pale in comparison. Anna’s excitement is infectious and Sherlock is practically bouncing with his own post-case high, though the buoyancy he feels is all due to Anna.

The walk out of the warehouse finally reveals the flashing blues of the police lights. The warehouse is lined with police tape, and Lestrade’s usual team is loitering about. Sherlock and Anna stroll over to Lestrade, still talking animatedly to each other, and stop short when they meet Lestrade. Both consulting detective and daughter open their mouths to speak and promptly close them when they see a severely displeased John, standing next to an exasperated Lestrade who has his arms crossed.

Sherlock risks a shoddy attempt at humor. “Let your boys know there’s forty-seven marbles they have to find that belong to Anna, I’m sure she has an inventory and will be counting.” No one laughs except Anna, who decides to hide behind Daddy after seeing the look on her Dad’s face. John doesn’t yell, he doesn’t scream, he doesn’t say much of anything and that is enough to make Sherlock exceptionally nervous. 

“Hi, Uncle Greg.” Anna mumbles and her mumbled greeting is met by a wave from her Uncle with an understanding smile. No one blames Anna for this little faux pas, this is all Sherlock’s doing. Her face falls in on itself in worry, eyeing both Dad and Daddy. This isn’t the first time she and Daddy have snuck out to do his detective work, and Dad warned Daddy not to do it again. Now they’ve been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and the case’s victory is now bitter on their tongues. The wind has been scorched out of Sherlock’s sails, and the post-case satisfaction settles into his skin like an uncomfortable itch, a bad high. Sherlock wants to sneer a bit at the smug look in the detective inspector’s eyes, not at all comfortable with Lestrade having knowledge that Sherlock and John were now going to go home and have a domestic. John licks his lips and lifts his eyebrows. Anna has enough presence of mind to shrink further behind her Daddy when faced with Dad’s wrath. She feels at fault for getting Daddy in trouble, she had pleaded with him to come out tonight. But she knows Daddy would never implicate her in that crime. 

John points to a waiting taxi without a word and they go silently, Sherlock pushes Anna along as his own head hangs guiltily. If John wasn’t so mad at him, he probably would have laughed at the sight they make. Sherlock hopes that in his zeal to see Anna alongside him, chasing down the criminal class together that he hasn’t forced her to suffer in the consequences as well. Sherlock helps Anna into the back seat of the taxi, buckles her in, and then listens to what he can of the exchange between John and Lestrade. It’s too far to hear the lower tones but Sherlock hears enough to know that John tells Greg he’ll send the two of them to the yard tomorrow for their statements. 

They’re not getting the time to loiter around the police tape like they usually do once the case is solved. John marches to the car, climbs in and slams the door with a force that makes the two guilty traitors flinch. 

The ride to Baker Street turns into an anxiety riddled ride filled with John’s hard, disappointed stare, and both Sherlock and Anna working to ignore his gaze. 

———

The ride to the familiar black Baker Street door is blessedly short. Sherlock takes a welcomed breath of clogged London air, fresher than the tense air of the taxi. John encourages them inside was a pointed clearing of his throat. He knows them both well enough to know they’d go anywhere else than inside if it meant they could avoid his discipline. The numbers 221b blazoned in brass, bright and welcoming even in the night, glitter their own hello as Mrs. Hudson beats Sherlock to the unlocking of the door. The old landlady must have been waiting for them. He smudges a kiss to her worried brow and tries to give her an encouraging smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. John must have raged before he left. Mrs. Hudson coos at her adopted grandchild and pats Anna’s head as she makes her way by the landlady. Anna spares her a look but there’s nothing either can say. 

They trudge upstairs and don’t relish the argument that is about to ensue. Even Anna is nervous with a sense of foreboding. Whatever happens between her fathers, this fight promises to not be the same. It won’t be like many of the others before and she wishes it didn’t have to happen. 

Sherlock removes Anna’s coat, hangs up the bag that she left on the floor, and then his own Belstaff and moves into the kitchen. Anna loiters in the sitting room, unsure of what’s waiting for either of them in her father’s brewing storm. They hear the tell-tale footsteps until an exhausted, angry John walks purposefully into the flat. He hangs up his coat and gives Sherlock a cool glance before looking to Anna. 

“Bed, sweetie pie.” The doctor commands, shaking his head when Anna tries to open her mouth in protest. They all know that she’s ready to defend both to the grave in the face of their bickering. She takes sides only to allow the other father to see reason. But not tonight, it was time for her to go to bed. This conversation would be reserved for adults only. At the age of ten, she now slowly begins to feel keenly the injustice of youth. She spares a sympathetic glance to Daddy but looks very glad to not be facing Dad’s wrath as she’s nudged up the stairs. 

Sherlock manages to give Anna an encouraging smile, assuring her that everything will be alright. “Goodnight, Daddy,” Anna mumbles. She hovers at the door to the landing, halting her progress upstairs until John gives her a push up the stairs. John shares a pointed look with Sherlock, following Anna to help her get ready for bed, and to make sure she would stay in bed. She doesn’t need much insisting as she usually does when back from a case. Tonight, she slides under the covers and begins to fall asleep almost immediately, knowing its not a good night to test the waters with Dad. 

———

Once Anna and John finish their ascent upstairs, Sherlock blows out a frustrated breath, fluttering the smattering of curls that are elegantly draped across his forehead. He really doesn’t understand John. There wasn’t anything bad that was going to happen. Anna’s fine. They caught the thief and they made it home. Just like when he would go out with John in the past. So instead of John, he had taken Anna. In his mind, there wasn’t much difference. They occupy the same warm, shining nucleus in the center of everything he now is, and have woven their way into every seam and crevice to be found in his mind palace. If he gets lost, and can’t find what he wants to, all he does is return to them and he can find his focus again. Without them in his life, Sherlock doesn’t know what he would be now. 

It’s not long before John comes down the stairs. About the time is takes for the kettle to boil. He didn’t think that Anna would linger long in her father’s company. Sherlock pretends to find entertainment in the mornings paper as he stands over the table in the kitchen, mug of tea in hand. There’s one for John brewing upon the kitchen counter. Perfectly timed for John’s approach. 

He notes with a grimace that John doesn’t go for the tea right away. Sherlock looks to see John standing on the perimeter of the kitchen, arms crossed in judgement. Sherlock rolls his eyes, looking to the sky for patience before returning to the paper. Dull, all the articles and reports dull, but it’s better to look at this paper than meet John’s accusatory gaze. 

John gestures to his husband all at once disgusted with Sherlock and exhausted. “I suppose you have something to say.” 

“Nothing was going to happen.” Sherlock growls, all petulance. 

“Don’t even— if that’s the best you’ve got, just forget it. You always run head long into danger Sherlock, always. And you can’t— not with Anna. And most importantly for yourself, not now, because of Anna. I won’t stand for it Sherlock.” John admonishes, the patronizing Sherlock frankly could do without. 

“I know what I’m doing, John!” He’s always been several steps ahead of the population at large, and tonight was no different, despite losing track of Anna among the office cubicles (which he pointedly doesn’t mention to John right now). 

“Oh yeah, I believe that one.” John mocks and Sherlock watches him tighten his jaw, reigning in that famous Watson anger. It’s now that John finally moves into the kitchen, limping his way to his tea. He is tired and the psychosomatic limp is rearing its influence again. Another stab of guilt hits Sherlock. “Like how you run head long into parking garages, crack dens, and abandon buildings… Just looking for your suspects, for your data.” John bites off bitterly and turns towards the rest of the room and Sherlock, bracing his hip against their kitchen counter, moodily gulping his warm tea.

“I wouldn’t do that with her, John!” It takes Sherlock only seconds before he’s able to unwrap the deductive truth behind John’s ire. Sherlock rears back as if slapped, eyeing John with unseeing shock. “You don’t trust me with her. Our own daughter.” 

John watches Sherlock’s face shutter, the slate wiping clean of any vulnerable emotion, shuttering against the well of hurt he had just seen. He’s seen the look enough times to know it, many times appearing as Mycroft insults his younger brother. But it always pains John when he sees Sherlock do it. John grimaces into his tea, his stomach turning sideways. He hasn’t seen Sherlock do that in the longest time, and this tonight is because of him. “I didn’t say that.” He argues, his voice low as he tries to defend himself, though his inner conscious knows that the thought has crossed his mind.

“You don’t have to.” Sherlock can see it clearly written in John’s guilty avoidance of looking his own husband in the eyes and it’s implied in how he’s been speaking to Sherlock since they got home. 

“Oh yes! How typical!” Sherlock jumps when John slams his mug onto the counter. It doesn’t break, though it’s a very near thing. Tea sloshes everywhere and drips down onto the tile floor. He watches the growing puddle dispassionately as John rages. Neither moves to clean it up, the drip of tea onto kitchen tile fills the silences between them. “Turn this on me to avoid the fact that you placed our daughter in danger! You—” John looks to brandish a scolding finger in Sherlock’s face but withdraws. “You know what? Fine. Go ahead!” John waves at Sherlock dismissively, tired of the whole affair really, dumping the very abused mug into the sing, uncaring. He’s just as tired of wasting his breath as Sherlock is of arguing with him. “Take our daughter on your little adventures. But don’t look to me when something goes horribly wrong to be the one to say I told you so. When she’s sent to hospital with broken bones, knife slashes, or bullet holes. That’ll be last thing I’ll have to say.” Something cold and filled with dread twists in just under Sherlock’s heart, onto his lungs, as he sees the resolution in John’s eyes. He’s been waiting for this. The one thing they can’t see past that makes John divorce him and leave with Anna forever. Taking all of his light and peace with them.

Sherlock doesn’t know what’s worse about all the things John’s said tonight but he’s not going to stick around to hear the rest of it. John’s waiting for a response, but the doctor has said enough. Really, his husband has caused enough harm for one night, he’s taken his lashings and there’s nothing more that he could think to say. Sherlock gathers up his mug and miserably stalks to their bedroom, he returns to the couch with his pillow, a spare sheet, his pajamas, blue robe, and a duvet, and petulantly sets about getting himself comfortable on the couch. John huffs and goes to the room Sherlock has abandoned, slamming the door. 

He stalks about the living space long enough to clean up the mess in the kitchen, grab his phone and change out of his clothes into his pajamas. He doesn’t plan on sleeping, as he makes quick work of slipping into his blue robe, he’s preparing for a very good sulk. After shoving the sheet aside morosely, Sherlock works to get comfortable by shuffling his head into the forgiving softness of his pillow and the leather of the couch underneath. He pulls up the duvet to his chin with a sigh turning into the couch. He tries to dispel the wetness from his eyes but he can’t. Fights with John have never quite hurt like this before. 

John is equally miserable alone in their bed. He can’t be bothered to get under the covers himself. 

Neither John or Sherlock sleep that night. 

———

Anna spends about a week and a half splitting time between her two fathers trying to get them to make up to one another. It wouldn’t be the first time a child realized they were the cause of parental disputes and that they themselves were the remedy. Attempts with Dad are a bit more successful than with Daddy, since Daddy can see her thinly veiled efforts for what they are — adorable but they don’t erase the hurt on his face when he thinks neither she or Dad are looking. But when Sherlock’s miserable both husband and daughter are usually the only ones that really see. 

This wasn’t something that was going to go away just because she willed it. They take her to school together and do everything with her like they’ve done before. But the efforts are stilted, tension flows between them on a continuous skipping record, and if it’s not tense, it’s annoyingly, resolutely silent. There’s not even the usual verbal jabs and sparring when they’re normally having a row, now there’s nothing. Anna eventually starts asking Nana Hudson to take her to her activities alone. Both fathers are bereft of her company, since she’s usually the one to fill the space with chatter, but Anna would rather have pleasant company or no company at all on her excursions than deal with the mounting tension between her fathers. 

Some attempts at getting them to talk indirectly are more successful than others. Like the night when she purposefully floods the kitchen sink while doing the dishes after dinner. Sherlock, John, and Anna end up soaked on the kitchen floor laughing. John and Sherlock slip and fall trying all at once to stop the flow of water and reach the sink to unclog it or turn off the water. The flood and slippery floor force Sherlock and John to touch and practically embrace each other. And eventually Anna’s cheeks are hurting with the laughter stuck inside them. They’re all laughing too hard to keep their balance for long either. Sherlock’s lack of grace makes John laugh with twinkling warmth that has Sherlock’s stomach flip-flopping.

It lasts about as long as it takes Nana Hudson to complain of a leak in her sitting room. Sherlock and John share awkward, hurt looks. Things were going so well, until they were reminded of reality. The bubble is broken, the brief armistice aborted, and they go back to their separate corners. Anna loves Nana Hudson, but sometimes she interrupts at the worst moments. 

Daddy gets a phone call, and Anna see’s Uncle Greg’s familiar number. The phone is singing into the room and it practically vibrates off the water splotched kitchen table. Anna watches her father talk to Uncle Greg about a new case. “Excellent! We’ve got a case Anna! Vials missing from a lab! Just imagine what we could find! What they could contain!” Anna is grabbing her jacket. 

That’s when she sees Dad shake his head sternly. It’s a school night, and it’s getting near her bedtime so that she’ll be able to get up for school in the morning. Dad’s retired army, always keeps her to a strict regimen. Both her and Daddy find it hateful, how he never deviates from it for even a night. Like now, as she morosely puts her jacket back onto the hook. She watches her fathers stare each other down, heading towards the foot of the stairs leading to her bedroom. 

Sherlock looks as though he’s eaten something distasteful. And he has, John’s overbearing nature in regards to Anna sits bitter and ashy on his tongue. “You know this would all go a lot smoother if you wouldn’t be so irrational with your constant worrying.” He bites, his words slashing through the air with little thought to remorse.

“Irrational?! My constant worrying?!?! It’s lucky for Anna that I do, or else who knows what her life would look like.” Sherlock decides with a scoff to leave rather than listen to John in all his piety. It’s getting harder to stomach day by day. John follows in the wake of Sherlock’s Belstaff, yelling down after him even though Nana Hudson can hear him. “If I left the decisions up to you, her life wouldn’t have any stability to it at all!!” John huffs letting the anger stew, and turns back into the flat, firmly shutting the door to the stairwell, so Nana wouldn’t get the idea to disturb them.

Anna looks to her father, eyes glassy with tears. She scoffs, an almost exact mimic of her father’s disgust but it’s all reserved for him and his behavior as she pounds her way angrily upstairs. It’s the only form of rebellion she has, it’s not like she could speak her mind to him. Not now. It’s all so unfair. Daddy would have dropped her off for sleep before school if it got too late. He always does! But no, Dad was making a right arse of himself trying to supersede Daddy’s wishes with all his sanctimony. 

John looks to the mess in the kitchen. Water everywhere, towels and dishes everywhere. “I’ll just clean everything up, shall I?” John grouses to the chairs in the sitting room. They sit there rather hoping he would as they didn’t want to get their feet wet. John goes about the process of cleaning the floor and counters in the kitchen, alone. The draining process takes away what’s left of his ire and once he’s finished all the anger inside him has lost its steam and is gone. 

John looks around him in the now quiet empty flat with a withered, dejected sigh. He hates being alone now, before he and Sherlock were together and Anna was in their life, he would have tolerated it. But now? Now the silence weighs heavy on him, he pinches the bridge of his nose against the burn in the corners of his eyes and goes about closing up the rest of the flat to get it ready for the morning. He’s tired, deep within his bones and just wants to go to sleep, not that he’ll get any sleep without Sherlock lying next to him. 

Upstairs, Anna falls onto her very pink fluffy bed with a huff, she can hear the muffled movements of her father ranting while going through the process of cleaning up the flood in the kitchen that was her doing. She at least has enough self-preservation to get ready for the morning. It starts with brushing her teeth and ends with her sobbing herself to sleep. She hates it when the Dads argue. When things are fine between them everything is great, but then there’s nights like this, when she worries that they might split up. It’s happened between her friends’ mommies and daddies all the time. She wanted her Dads to be different. They had always been different. 

Anna falls into a wretched sleep, wakes up with her eyes practically glued shut from the tears. In the morning, she finds Dad up and miserably making breakfast but greeting her with pleased smile at finding her up without prodding. But the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. She kisses him good morning and then looks around for Daddy. She leans into their room and finds the side of the bed he usually occupies is just as flat and undisturbed as she knew it would be. 

Anna sighs and finds it hard not to just stare morosely into her breakfast. She goes to school, Dad goes to work and neither of them speak, both missing Daddy too much to bother faking pleasantries. 

———

Sherlock eventually comes back home after the case is over. Anna is all too glad to see him, and she can tell in the tentatively small way that Dad greets him that he’s glad to see the mad detective, too. It’s not often that he runs out on cases alone anymore. So, when he does, neither father or daughter can stop from worrying. He has some cuts and bruises Dad grouses at him for acquiring, and Anna listens to it from outside the bathroom door, smiling despite their arguing. She hears Dad begin to say “if only I had gone…” but it wilts and dies before Dad can finish suggesting it. Despite the retraction, Dad has put the suggestion into the air, that his presence could have saved Daddy the trouble of getting hurt. 

“It was only some thorns from some bushes, and an elbow in the ribs when I tackled the man. I’ll be fine.” Sherlock grumbles. His growls are clearly impatient for Dad to be done tending to his cuts and scrapes. Anna winces with her Daddy as his breath hitches, the intake of breath hiding the yelp of pain. Dad must be pulling the wrap around his ribs tighter. Bit more than a bruise then. More than once they snipe at each other while John tends to his wounds. Sherlock says John is fussing too much over his injuries, and John complains about Sherlock fussing at being looked after.

“Next time though you might not be.” John admonishes Sherlock in his best Dad voice. 

“Come with me next time, so you won’t have to worry.” Anna loves hearing her Daddy’s deep rumbling voice in the house again. His endless frustration with Dad’s worries sooth her nervous thoughts that he might jump up and leave again, it’s heart-warming and achingly familiar. 

“You know I can’t, I need to work and someone has to make sure Anna gets to school in the mornings. We talked about this, Sherlock.” Anna hears her Dad let out a tired sigh. 

“Yes.” Sherlock growls as he feels his husband’s hands run over the skin of his back again. Those hands that always lovingly rub against the many scars and marks that mar the once pristine pale skin. _Husband._ It feels like such a cheap word to him, when compared to how hollowed out he’s been feeling in John’s absence. And now the warmth of John’s hands is as good as the sun on his back in the summer. It’s bright and fills up the cavernous holes John had left behind. Something has always been missing when he’s without John. He hadn’t known that was possible until he met the man. His eyes shutter closed against the touch to his skin that couldn’t be anything other than loving. Despite their anger, despite everything, John still touches him as if he’s something to be treasured, with a gentleness that rips through him like a tidal wave, wiping all of the disgusting insides of him clean again. Even when they’re fighting, John still manages to care, even when Sherlock’s being a cock. He’ll never understand what he’s done to deserve it, any of it — or this, now. 

They’re both tired and Daddy is coming off his post-case high faster than usual, Anna can feel the efforts from the previous days and the lack of sleep waiting for Daddy to come home weighing on her as well. She never quite remembers her knees being so comfortable. 

Sherlock lumbers out of the bathroom, now that John has completed cleaning every single little scratch — right down to the paper cut he had gotten from Lestrade’s ridiculous piles of paper work — and halts John when he feels the man getting ready to continue his exhausting reprimands. He hears the familiar, butterfly breathing in his ear and looks down. 

He puts a hand up, then shushes quietly with a finger to his lips, and points down to Anna’s sleeping form curled up against the little section of wall between the bathroom and kitchen just outside the door. They share a regretful look, knowing that she probably came down to greet Daddy now that he was home and didn’t want to interrupt John’s mending of Sherlock’s wounds. They had sworn from the beginning to never get Anna involved in their disputes. But when you fight claws out, innocents are bound to get caught in the crossfire. More than once it’s been Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, or Mycroft. The other adults that can fend for themselves and remain distant to their sniping at each other, waiting for the couple to work through it. But this is different, as Sherlock lifts Anna’s dead-weight into his arms. She stirs with a moan, and barely is able to mutter “Daddy” before the rumble in Sherlock’s deep voice makes her smile as he shushes her back to sleep. He wasn’t around the flat, to avoid John, and in his cowardice, left Anna feeling neglected, worried about him also in his absence. One thing he never wanted to do since the day Anna was born, was let her feel the brunt of his Sherlockian ways. The guilt he feels shudders across his features. John shares a look with him, understanding his guilt. Sherlock wasn’t the only one forgetful of what Anna was needing. John was too upset himself to notice his daughter was sharing in his miserable emotions. 

Anna never likes it when they fight and they selfishly forgot that to have their little feud. 

John reaches down to kiss Anna’s forehead and Sherlock uses the last fraying strands of his energy to take Anna to bed. He tucks her in and kisses her forehead, breathing her scent in with a sigh before leaving his little bee to her buzzing dreams. It’s a small little victory to see her smile in her sleep before he flicks off the lights.

He can’t even pretend to be arguing with John when he finds himself curling into the older man’s space in their bed tonight. He doesn’t quite reach out though, afraid to bridge that gap, he’s satisfied to just lay in the echo of John’s warmth. Asking anything more from the one person he can’t live without feels like an intrusion upon the burden he’s already asked John to carry for him. Sherlock tries a great deal not hate himself for closing his eyes when John turns around to face him. _Coward._

He holds back the gasp in his throat when he opens his eyes and sees the echoing look in John’s eyes that he can feel well up from within him. He sees it in John’s eyes, and know it’s on his own mind. The thousands of things they’ve said to each other, in anger. The things they didn’t say when they should have. They need to be kinder to one another, for each other, and Anna deserves better from them both. John reaches out to rest his fingers on top of the fingers Sherlock had slowly inched into the No Man’s land of their bed. It’s a truce, a quiet touch that disguises a multitude of imperfections. But for now, in the hush of night that spreads slowly over the city beyond their quiet street, in the disgusting boredom that now crawls over him like a sludge, both detective and doctor are able to find some peace in their dreams. Their fingers intertwined, the touch gentle but both desperately holding on.

Anna wakes up to the scratching of Daddy’s violin in the morning. Anna sends her pink duvet into the air with a kick, and she realizes, with a pleased hum, how long it’s been since he’s played. 

——— 

Anna thought there was peace there for a while until that Sunday finds Daddy home bored and staring into a microscope with no cases. He gets awful and terribly grumpy during the dull times. Anna doesn’t know if she enjoys the cases Uncle Greg brings him for the adventure or for the pleasing times they bring. More than once both she and Dad have borne the brunt of his tirades.

Now, Sherlock is sprawled over the back of the couch, so that his limbs are in a ridiculous bramble over the cushions and arms, and his face is mashed into it. Anna sits in front of the TV, regrettably muted when he growled about the noise. She’s already tried once to join him on the couch, to distract him with a cuddle. Sometimes it works, but not this time. He told her resolutely to “go away,” in that voice he has during what Dad calls his “sulking.” It’s all long-suffering ennui. 

The one time she did show anything like tears when Daddy sniped at her, it caused such a row. Now she simply says “fine” and walks away. Both her and Dad know him too well to be hurt by his grumpiness now. It’s only for the moment until the next case comes in, and he really doesn’t mean it. Not really. 

She chooses then to either read in her room for the day, or she’ll spend it on the cold living room floor as is preferable to Daddy’s well placed barbs. She and Dad tried sitting in his chair for a bit, but his leg always acts up during the dullness of Sundays. Daddy prowls around miserably sometimes, but Dad’s sulks are more physical than Daddy’s. He’ll spend the time cleaning, organizing, writing, and limping about. But unlike Daddy, he’s not quite able to hold her anymore. 

Dad’s now found the Sunday paper of more interest than Daddy’s sulking and tries not to wrinkle the pages too much with every tightening of his fists at every noise groaned from the couch. There’s a sigh that comes from across the sitting room. Anna pauses in her clumsy attempts to draw an anatomically correct bee for Daddy, to watch Dad pull the paper away and look in Daddy’s general direction. His eyes glitter with amusement despite the annoyance they both feel at Sherlock’s mood. 

“Jaaaaaawwwwwwwwwn!!!” Sherlock implores John to end his agony despite only uttering his partner’s name. Anna giggles, but immediately quiets at the glare she receives from both her dads. There’s nothing entertaining about Sherlock’s boredom, and John knows Sherlock doesn’t need the encouragement of his daughter’s audience. John pulls away his paper to meet Sherlock’s eye. Neither thinks it’s very funny, although Anna thinks it’s all very funny. 

“Well look on the bright side, now you have some time for helping Anna.” John says his reply to Sherlock’s complaining with a little bit too much bite. His grin is all teeth. They’ve had to deal with Daddy’s insufferable boredom all weekend. It’s wearing on him.

“What don’t I do for her?” She looks up to see Daddy has climbed over the coffee table to stalk around the sitting room barely pausing to jump over her and her drawing set up narrowly missing some of her crayons with his heel. He moves over to his music stand flinging music pieces off of it. Even his violin proves dulled in stimulation by his roiling boredom. 

“I could think of a few things.” Anna listens to John mutter this under his breath, just loud enough to be heard, unless you’re not paying attention. 

Sherlock spins around, his dressing gown swinging like a cape in his wake. “Like what?” Those two words are controlled and said with a restraint that is too tenuous to go unheeded. But Dad looks unfazed as he attempts to go back to his paper. 

“Remembering to take her to school?” John spares Sherlock a glance from around the paper with an arched eyebrow and there’s another flick of the paper’s pages. 

“Oh, to hell with them! The last thing she needs to have her brain numbed by those moronic idiots.” Sherlock catches Anna’s eye with a wink. More than once, John has been forced to smooth ruffled feathers at Anna’s school when Sherlock tried to push her through to higher grades since Anna is always top of her class. But John would rather her have friends her age than stress out her mind with premature learning. They’ve gone back and forth on this issue before, and Sherlock would gladly hire the best tutors to get her home-schooled. 

“They may be idiots to the great Sherlock Holmes but she must go. We’ve had this argument before.” The ‘many times’ goes unsaid as John lets out a frustrated sigh.

“Yes. And we agree to disagree.” It’s not the raising of Daddy’s voice that makes Anna run for the hills, it’s the look Dad gets in his eyes. It’s a look she’s seen before, like the night she colored on the walls of their bedroom and spent the rest of the night cleaning it up. Anna makes quick work of gathering her things and slides between them, as John smacks his paper against the cushion of his chair. Her schooling has raised her dads hackles more than once. Anna takes her things with her, knowing they could be at this a while as she runs up the stairs to her room. Shutting the door firmly on the vibrations of their argument that echo upstairs.

“No. No. Fuck you— You know very well what we said. We agreed that it was best that she go to school no matter how much YOU didn’t like it. You may not have liked school but she has a right to an education. You of all people should know that.” Sherlock snarls as he stalks passed John and into the kitchen to pretend to preoccupy himself with the petri dishes of his latest experiment. Nothing toxic, just spores growing on the table. He knows very well that he agreed. But only when he has asked Anna what she thought, and saw her playing with her friends. John at least had a point about that, and she was as gregarious as her other father. John continues undeterred by Sherlock’s seemingly lack of interest. “Plus, she has friends. She has a life there! You’d strip her of that opportunity just to make a point? To stick it to every arsehole that bullied you in school?”

Sherlock nudges one of the moldy dishes with his finger, a full pout growing in his lips. “…No.” 

“It cuts the same way for your detective work.” John forges on bringing up the subject that they seemed to have called a truce on before, now that he has Sherlock thinking of Anna’s care with a logical mind. “It’s not like she’s going to be sitting somewhere safe inside an office building drawing pictures in a cubicle.” That’s not the type of work that Sherlock would ever content himself with but it would be the safest place for Anna. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes at the suggestion of cubicles. “Like that could keep her busy.” Sherlock mutters under his breath much in the same way John did at the stupid presumption. Tit for tat. 

“She does very well when I take her to work.” A doctor’s clinic wasn’t exactly working in cubicles but it was safe enough.

Sherlock sighs in exasperation. Watching John trying to make a point like this is tiresome. Sometimes it was so hard not smoking. “Anna was perfectly safe John! We were running after a harmless house robber. Not some criminal mastermind.” Sherlock would never tempt fate of letting someone of Moriarty’s or Magnussen’s caliber near her. 

John shakes his head. Nope Sherlock wasn’t winning this one. Even if he’s going to have to be obstinate about it. “I don’t care. I don’t want Anna chasing after you.”

“Like her father used to?” Sherlock mutters as his lip curls with hurt and disgust. John traded on what they had for playing the role of the responsible father. Sometimes Sherlock thinks, bitterly, that they probably should have never started this at all if John was going to be like this. Sherlock could imagine that the tedium was driving his husband crazy, or that now he sees that it is this. This is what drives a wedge eventually between couples. 

“Excuse me?” John questioned, knowing that his job at the clinic was necessary to providing for Anna’s needs. They wouldn’t rely on the Holmes family money, even if Anna was adopted by Sherlock now. John’s pride would never let him be beholden to anyone like Mycroft Holmes.

“When was the last time you and I went out on a case together?” Sherlock accused, his hurt evident in his voice and his agitation. 

“ _That_ is not the same thing.” In no way was his assisting Sherlock the same as him dragging their daughter in and out and about all of London chasing bad guys.

“Why isn’t it?” Sherlock questions with a shrug. His flippant air with Anna’s safety is starting to eat at John as his back gets straighter and his jaw gets tighter. 

“Because unlike Anna I know how to protect myself, and you. I’ve been trained as a doctor and a soldier. And I’ll keep you from hurting yourself. Anna is a child, she needs your protection! She’s not some apprentice for you to parade about for fun. She needs you to take care of her! Not the other way around! Children need limits because they know of none. Pretty much like how you are even now. That’s your job as a parent. You set limits.” John turns his back on Sherlock to bang about the kitchen making a tea. When Sherlock argued like this, he could be just as exhausting as John’s pleas for him to understand his need for Anna’s safety. 

They both exhaust each other, and John wondered how much longer they could keep it up.

“I protect her.” Sherlock defended following his partner. 

“Putting yourself between the danger and her as you drag her into the fray is not the same thing!” John pounds his fist into the counter in frustration. He wouldn’t dare tell Sherlock about all of the nights he spent awake because he woke up from a nightmare that included Sherlock and Anna running headlong into some sort of danger he could have prevented.

“Don’t you want your daughter to have fun?” Sherlock refused to give in for Anna’s sake. All they experienced while going after criminals was for her sake and a learning experience. A way for him to teach her everything he knows, he’d never let go of this, not for the world. 

John sighs, pushing away the tea mug, not pouring to make the tea. “Of course, I do— I— you know what? Fine. Fine! You want her to go with you? Take her with you. I refuse to be the bad guy in this any longer.” John spares Sherlock a single hurt, defeated look before snagging his coat from the hook. Sherlock knows he’s won the argument when he hears the banging of the front door. But the victory is a hollow crown for him to wear. There’s no pleasure in it. 

He plays the saddest melody on his violin that sends Anna into tears in her room. It lasts for all of five minutes before he’s encouraging her to take what she might need and come with him on his latest case. And Daddy’s right, after as he helps her into her coat, this is just the distraction they both need. 

———

John and Sherlock still aren’t okay. Not by a long shot. This is the first time they’ve seriously argued over how to take care of Anna. The first time they’ve had an all-out battle that’s lasted this long, not since Sherlock’s return from his hiatus. That seems like a lifetime ago. But now? Now the disagreement is driving a wedge between them. But Sherlock did promise Anna. 

Only this time they aren’t after a thief, this time it’s a murderer. After they actually found the missing vials, Sherlock concluded that they were leading to something bigger than the Yard had supposed. 

Sherlock and Anna manage to track him down to a shut-in boarding house on a rougher side of town. Sherlock can feel the eyes of his homeless network keeping watch. They’re to pull Anna out of harm’s way and leave him behind, even if he’s unconscious and bleeding. 

Sherlock wants to go after the guy, but the doubts John has sown into his head and the disapproving glare he’d receive from his husband has the detective looking down at his daughter. He can see the same adventurous glint in her eye her father always wears while on a case. But the keen, sharpness of her gaze she’s learned entirely from Sherlock. He smiles down fondly at her, he can’t let her go inside with him. He can’t put her in danger, not this time. 

Sherlock crouches and grabs her small shoulders. It’s then he gets it, gets how John feels about protecting her. She’s grown up so much but she’s still so very young, and so small. He cups her face in his hands. One of his hands could wrap around her whole head, he knows they do when she and him are playing in the sitting room in front of the TV. Sherlock sighs and Anna looks at him queerly. “Daddy? Aren’t we going to go in?” Anna looks a little too eagerly at the certain danger to be found inside the flat complex. 

“I am but you’re not.” Anna whines but Sherlock covers her mouth with a finger and shakes her shoulders for emphasis. “Now listen to me. I can’t be brave and keep an eye on you. Not this time. You’ve seen the crime photos.” He tries to reason with her. “Your father is right. And you know what this awful person is capable of, so I need to keep you safe.” Sherlock intoned making sure he met her eye. “You need to stay out here. I’ve already texted your Uncle Greg, and he should be here in a few minutes.” He can hear sirens throughout the city, inevitably a set of them might be Lestrade and his team. “I mean it Anna, stay here. Alright?” Sherlock lifts her chin with his long fingers, that seem that much longer when nudging at her tiny chin. She lifts her head, stubbornly keeping it low so it’s just enough to meet Daddy’s eye, and just like her father, refuses to cry even though her chin wobbles. She gives a small miserable nod, her eyes filled with betrayal and he kisses her once on the mouth and again on the cheek, with a hug, before going inside. 

Anna watches, a whine welling out of her along with her trepidation, as Sherlock climbed the many stairs of the complex to get to the floor towards the top that would lead to his killer. Anna looks to the road where Uncle Greg pulls up along with as many people from his division as could be spared, and an ambulance. Her Uncle never does take chances when it comes to Daddy doing his detective work. 

“Uncle Greg!” Anna runs after the car, running into the ready embrace in her Uncles arms. 

“What’s all this now?” Lestrade questioned as he watched his niece point in the direction of the top floors of the flat complex. 

“Daddy went ahead without you! Look there he is, there!” Anna pointed towards the general direction she saw Sherlock go in. Lestrade barely caught the flutter of the familiar dark coat in the poor lighting go into one of the flats. 

“Let’s see if your Daddy needs my help, alright?” Lestrade tried to encourage her to wait with him, despite the sense the detective inspector has that this won’t end well. 

“He wouldn’t let me go with him.” Anna lamented, feeling tears come to the corner of her eyes. 

“Good! You shouldn’t go with him to talk to suspects on a case like this.” Lestrade admonishes the pouting face looking up at him. He’s trying very hard not to laugh at his niece as she continues to be surly and stubborn, asking repeatedly if they could go get her Daddy. 

Lestrade would in fact be up in the flat with Sherlock if he hadn’t found Anna down here all by herself. It seemed prudent in his mind that he stays with her.

It’s a short while later when a man comes bursting from the same door Sherlock walked through, and scrambles down the front face of the building where it meets another. As a resident, the suspect is more than a little familiar with the buildings, to their disadvantage. 

“WALKER!!!!” They hear Sherlock’s bellowing yell following him as Anna watches her father lean over the wall like he would be tempted to climb after their suspect. Anna knows if this were years ago, he just might have. “LESTRADE THAT’S THE MAN YOU WANT! AFTER HIM!!!” Sherlock implores running to the stairs. He’s not quite as spry as he had been a few years ago, it’s easier for him to jump down the stairs. 

Anna sees where the suspect will end up, and she knows that her speed is a bit better than the adults around her. She breaks away from Lestrade’s loosened grip on her shoulder and runs after the suspect at full speed. 

“ANNA! I TOLD YOU TO STAY HERE!!!” Lestrade shouts after his niece. Utterly foolish, and reckless. Like both of her fathers put together. “DAMMIT, DONOVAN SECURE THE PERIMITER!” Lestrade calls after Sally Donovan, pushing the sergeant into action. He’s running after both his foolhardy niece and cursing her idiot father for bringing her along. 

All of this goes ignored by Anna as she feels her heart pumping in her ears, her breaths heavy. She sees the bad guy just a few feet in front of her. Her youth and lighter weight propel her forward to gain on him. She’s going to do this, take down the bad guy and save the day. She sees in her mind the pride her Daddy shows often on his face during cases they go out on together, and imagines it doubled in radiance. It will be worth the bruises she’s going to get. With one last push, Anna closes the gap between her and the murder suspect, it’s now or never. With a bracing breath, Anna steels herself and jumps. Anna reaches out, with every intent of grabbing the suspect by the legs and trip him up. Unfortunately, she’s so close, too close and ends up underneath his legs instead of around them. Sherlock sees it all happen, slow motion, and searing itself in the deepest parts of his mind palace. 

“Anna!” Sherlock cries, reaching for his daughter even though she’s across the courtyard of the flat complex and Sherlock trips in his desperation. He pulls his head up just in time to see it all. With a sickening crunch, Walker steps onto Anna’s arm. Sherlock hears the crunch and the cry in pain and his focus narrows to a pinpoint. He’s clawing at the earth and grass beneath his hands, digging his finely clothed knees into the moist ground until he’s on his feet again and running. Like a panther, that has sprung into action. His muscles contract and propel him forward in precise movements. All he can see is Anna clutching her injured arm. He’s at her side so quickly he doesn’t remember his legs crossing the distance. It feels like he floated to her. 

He’s at her side as the cry “Daddy!!!” comes out of her in one loud, long wail. He spares little thought to the murder that tripped on her arm. Flesh and bone act as a deterrent to running just as easily as a misplaced hurdle. The murderer is too dazed and shocked by the sight of Anna and her broken arm to get up and leave, despite the scene allowing him the perfect distraction. Greg and Donovan have him in cuffs before he’s able to get moving and Greg is shouting for Sherlock to announce that Anna is okay. 

All of that is muffled and ignorable as Sherlock cradles Anna to his chest. He pushes her wet face into his Belstaff and his chin rests on top of her head. Her arm is bent away from her elbow at a sickly angle. He hopes the arm isn’t shattered. There’s nothing he can do for the pain, or the tears. He’s rocking Anna and shushing her like he did the last time she had a fever to little effect. John maybe worried for her welfare, but it’s Sherlock that is run ragged emotionally any time Anna is in any pain. He’ll end up carrying her pain with him as well. His scarf is damp with her tears. He barely registers the gruff timbre of Lestrade’s voice encouraging him to get to the ambulance that’s waiting. His mouth is kissing and shushing, it’s all utter nonsense and sentiment that he should scorn but what the hell does it matter? His chest burns with both the exertion from running and the wild panic snarling his chest in its grasp. Black spots prove how close he is to hyperventilating. With a few deep breaths, he’s able to breathe again and get Anna to calm her wails to whimpering sobs that now squeeze his heart. 

“SHERLOCK.” Lestrade’s firm voice has Sherlock turning a ghostly pale face to the Detective Inspector. “Get up, and take her to the ambulance.” Greg turns a pleading gaze to Sherlock. With one hand in his grasp, and another on Sherlock’s elbow, he’s able to get the man up without jostling his niece too much. Greg spares a second to run his fingers soothingly through her blonde hair and he’s following Sherlock to the ambulance on leaden legs. 

The EMT’s are waiting for Sherlock and run to cradle the arm that Anna refuses to pull away from her chest. Sherlock tries to look at it as Anna cries but finds that the tears in Anna’s eyes are also in his own. With as calming a voice as he can manage, he patiently gets Anna to move her arm away from her body and allow the EMT’s to look at her arm. They all wince, or hiss, or their eyes go wide in shock. For a bunch of people who look at accidental medical oddities all day and night, it’s hardly an encouraging sign. They manage with some whining from Anna to at least get a sling on it to hold her arm in place. Sherlock assures her how brave his bumble bee is being the whole time, and his insides were churning in agony. 

“We have to take her into the nearest A&E,” one kind girl informs them with an apologetic knit to her brows. “We can’t do more than make her comfortable for the ride, it definitely needs a more thorough looking over than we can do here.” Sherlock wants to scold them all for stating the obvious to him, but when Anna is back in his arms, he can’t stop himself from holding her as close as he can without causing his daughter to cry. “You can hold her for the ride, and try to keep her as still as possible.” With a nod, Sherlock acknowledges the girl and allows himself to be propelled by hands onto the gurney and buckled into it.

“Hey, she alright?” A gruff call pulls Sherlock’s focus from Anna to the doors of the ambulance, half closed as the EMT’s walk around the scene and inside the ambulance to ready it for going to the hospital. Sherlock sees the silver-haired detective inspector climbing into the ambulance. At Sherlock’s shrug Greg sighs and moved inside to pet at Anna’s hair and leaves a kiss on what part of it he can reach. “She will be alright, Sherlock. Don’t worry. Do you want me to call John for you?” Greg looks to Sherlock with a questioning look in his eyes, like he’s wondering why Sherlock didn’t tell them to do that sooner. Lestrade isn’t prepared to see the way Sherlock’s eyes get wide with panic, like he’s afraid of John seeing Anna in this state. He pulls Anna closer to himself as if he were afraid someone would take Anna away from him, someone would somehow think that this injury would deem him an unfit parent. Or worse, that John would somehow use this against him. 

“N—no! No, don’t. I’ll— I’ll call him once we get her to the hospital.” Sherlock watched Lestrade’s lack of surety flicker through his eyes at this decision but it’s gone before he can give it voice. He knows what Greg is thinking, and he’d be right, that Sherlock is afraid for John to find out. Greg is always understanding in situations like this.

“Alright, I’ll come back with Molly to see her at Baker Street once the munchkin will be mending.” Lestrade swipes his fingers through those gorgeous golden locks he adores almost as much as the hair of his own children, before kissing her goodbye. “I’ll see you soon, love! Don’t worry you’re a tough biter, it’ll be over before ya know it.” Greg announces this with more cheer than his eyes show himself capable. But Sherlock takes the effort for what it is, lifting his mouth in some twisted sense of a smile he can barely feel. 

“See ya later, Uncle Greg.” Anna whispers shakily around her thin whimpers with more bravado than Sherlock thought her able to possess. He kisses her as many times as he can as Lestrade closes the doors to the ambulance and they’re off to the nearest hospital, where Sherlock hopes the doctors and nurses will be competent and he hopes, when John gets there, won’t be the place where John decides to take them both away from him forever. 

———

The ride to the hospital takes forever. At least it feels like forever, every time the ambulance is forced to break for traffic, Sherlock tenses to brace Anna from being jostled. But every shake of the cabin, or swing from a turn has her crying and shaking against Sherlock’s neck in distress. Every whine, every whimper, every agonized noise made in distress twists around Sherlock’s heart like a strangling vine. 

He’ll still have to deal with John’s anger at finding their daughter injured later, but for now, this is punishment enough. Though he doubts, he’ll be able to feel comfortable with the trust of responsibility for Anna for at least a year. His poor bumble bee is in pain and it’s all his blundering fault. 

He vows ten times over in the span of the ride in that blasted ambulance that for as long as his name is Sherlock Holmes, he’ll never take Anna on a case again. 

As if that could be enough. He feels another tear fall on his neck and roll down his skin into the woven yarn of his scarf. It’s never going to be enough. 

It’s an eternity of the handful of minutes it takes for the ambulance to finally come to a stop. Sherlock is moving and out of the cabin before the EMT’s can move to assist him or Anna. There’s a gurney waiting for them as doctors and nurses are running towards the current emergency. An EMT walks beside him, announcing her probable condition to the doctors and nurses.

At their nod of dismissal, the EMT’s give way to the hospital’s emergency staff. Nurses and doctors push the gurney through to the hallway that will lead to the exam rooms. Sherlock makes to follow the gurney but a hand stops him. A very senior nurse stops his progression as he moves to get around her to where he can hear Anna wailing for him. Sherlock blinks, both at the realization that he’s being forcibly detained in the waiting room, and refusing to let the nurse see him cry. But the tears swim into his vision with every cry he hears from Anna ringing in his own ears. They echo in his mind palace and squeeze at his heart. He knows his daughter, she could care less what will happen to herself with her Daddy staying by her side. But she’s not quite old enough to not be fearful when faced with such an obstacle on her own. 

“Sir. Sir, I can’t permit you to go with the patient.” The nurse glares at him, and he glares back. 

“Anna.” He corrects the nurse, hating their cold, detached airs. It’s one of the things he loves most about John, he’s never once given into the easy lure of removing himself from the equation of healing people. He looks down his nose at the nurse, ready to hit her if he must. “I have to be with her!” He can feel his voice growling out of his chest. Cold dread seeps into the cavernous spaces left behind inside him the more they’re separated. The nurse doesn’t understand how much Anna’s health and happiness is vital to his own survival. 

He took it for granted that afternoon, he never would again. 

“What is your relationship to Anna, sir?” The nurse questions with a lift of her eyebrow, as she crosses her arms, unmoved. 

“I’m her father!” Sherlock looks appalled at the suggestion that he’s otherwise. But the doubting look she gives him has Sherlock shrinking away. He can read her thoughts, her disgusting assumptions are plain on her old, worn face simply because they look nothing alike. When he’s with John or people know him, they don’t question it. But here? Now? Do people really think this when they look at him and Anna together? Do they think that he’s either kidnapped her or molesting her or attached to her in some inappropriate manner? Violent rage settles into his stomach, a black, potent sludge. He can recall the feeling only one other time. CAM, with every flick to John’s face. His back straightens at the suggestion that his motive to be with Anna are so subversive. “Her adoptive father.” Sherlock corrects, putting up the most autocratic front he possibly can, channeling Mycroft if he were honest with himself. 

“Do you have proof of that, Mr…?” The nurse raises another disbelieving eyebrow.

“Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, and that is my daughter! Anna Watson-Holmes!” Sherlock announces with a decisive nod. He unfortunately doesn’t make it a policy to carry around proof that she’s his daughter. He never anticipated that it would be necessary. That really is more John’s area, the responsible parent. 

“Well, Mr. Holmes, since you don’t have identification for Anna, and we don’t know if you’re her adoptive father or even a legal guardian, you won’t be allowed to see her.” The nurse rolls her eyes, thinking that Sherlock was somehow some incompetent ponce to be allowed to have Anna in his care. “If you are her parent as you say, you’ll have no problem getting identification to the fact. And you had better hurry, we can’t do anything more for her, even x-rays, until you do. We’ll keep her as comfortable as possibly, but for anything more, we’ll need written consent before we proceed.” The nurse turns and leaves him in the waiting room without even an acknowledgement. Sherlock’s throat tightens against the pain in his chest. He knows he has to call John. The quicker the man gets here the better. He clears his throat— can barely get it to work, really.

He pulls out his phone and has to access the part of his mind palace that remembers how to work his phone. It takes a minute, there’s nothing but discombobulation and chaos in there. Sentiment has his inner workings scattered to the winds. Finally, he remembers, and finds John’s number. With a sobbing cough, he presses send. This is it, this will be the end. 

“Sherlock?” John answers on the second ring, all concerned. He never calls, ever. Not unless… 

“J—John!” It’s all Sherlock can say as a sob rocks his chest. It’s all horrible. Everything is horrible. 

“Sherlock? What is it? Are you alright?” John’s voice is steady and sure in his ear, the angry annoyance he hears is oddly comforting. It’s an anchor to his chaotic thoughts. He’s been so stupid, so blind. John was right. John’s always right. 

“F—fine.” He clears his throat as best as he can. “I’m fine. It’s n—not me. Anna, she’s—” Sherlock can’t help the sob the wells up out of him. He knows that he wouldn’t be so hysterical if he could see her. Or if John could only be here now to reassure him that she will be alright.

“Anna? Sherlock, what happened? Tell me what happened.” John encourages, the calm eye in the storm of Sherlock’s life during any medical emergency. He can hear the rustle around the flat of John putting his mug in the sink, grabbing keys and something else before shrugging on his jacket. He checks the clock. It’s just gone ten, he must have come back from the pub and stayed up to wait for them. Has it really been that long already? 

“We were chasing Walker. The suspect. He confessed without knowing it and ran knowing I caught him. I chased after him. Anna— Oh god.” Sherlock has to stop to let out another sob to get control of himself. He can just see it all happening over and over as he tries to explain it. 

“Sherlock—” John sighs into the phone. It’s disappointed, forgiving, and apologizing all at once. Sherlock presses on, trying to suppress the urge around his tears that wet the phone. 

“…followed him, tried to grab at his legs and he—” Sherlock can’t continue around the choking gasping sobs that grab at his throat. He heaves a deep breath to steady himself, and tries not to vomit, seeing Anna’s little arm under that moron’s feet again. It could have been so much worse. “Her arm, John. It was her arm.” He hears the breath of relief. Though in his current state, Sherlock doesn’t understand what the doctor has anything to be relieved about. John tries to get other information out of him but other that the name of the hospital, Sherlock can’t manage much else. John does his best to calm him but can hear it’s a lost cause. He can’t believe how gentle John is being with him right now, it’s enough to start him sobbing all over again. It makes his chest ache, he misses John. So much anger, and for what? Right now, it feels meaningless. Sherlock swipes at the tears that he can’t seem to stop. 

“I’ll be there as soon as I can Sherlock, it’s going to be alright.” John chides his husband and tries to get him to calm down. “It’s just a broken arm, nothing serious. I’m actually surprised she’s this old for her first broken bone.” 

“Alright...” Sherlock can hear John pulling away to hang up the phone, aiming to get into what Sherlock can hear is definitely not the same noise as a cab. Mycroft must be watching and sent a car to Baker Street. “John—!” Sherlock can’t really explain the dread that grips him when John moves to hang up. 

“Yeah?” John questions, hearing the distress in Sherlock’s voice. 

“I’m sorry… I— I’m so stupid. You were right. I’m sorry…” More sobs bluster out of his mouth before he can halt them. He’s barely keeping it together and anyone sitting or walking nearby can see it. But this is a hospital, isn’t this the place to cry? 

“Yes, you’re an idiot. But you’re my idiot. I love you. And you and I can argue about how stupid you were or weren’t later, I should be there soon.” Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed at those words. 

He hears John ring off, and lowers the phone where it lays as a useless weight in the palm of his hand. He marvels at John’s boundless patience with him, at the endless depth of fondness in John’s voice despite the situation. Sherlock wants to curl in on himself, around John’s voice. To just allow the cheap tile below his feet to swallow him up until he’s just atoms spread out over the space around him, until John is here to put him right— into a functioning human being— again. They rarely confess those words to each other, but John seems to know that he needs to hear them. Sherlock needs those words now, needs to be reminded that John won’t leave him, not now, not again. John hanging up regrettably leaves Sherlock to his thoughts, which inside his mind palace, can do nothing but fester. 

Sherlock doesn’t count the minutes it takes for John to get there. But he does spend the whole of the minutes it takes for John to get to the hospital fighting his own thoughts, some of it staring miserably at the goings on in the hospital, the downturn of his mouth and continual tears reminding him of another time he thought he had deleted long ago. When his parents had to tell him that his grandmother had died. She had been the only other person besides Redbeard who understood. He had never gotten the chance to say goodbye. His parents had left for the hospital and left him in the care of their aunt. Everyone around them was very solemn, even Mycroft, and Sherlock was the only one in the room who didn’t understand. When his mother and father came home, she told him what had happened, because he would ask. When she told him, he at first was angry, yelling, banging his fists into his father’s legs, until his mother hugged him. He sobbed into her shoulder, shouting for his Nana to come back and not to leave him alone. He railed at the world, at his parents, everyone until finally his parents left him alone in his room. He sobbed himself hoarse, and woke up the next morning almost unable to open his eyes. He spent the funeral at the fringes of the room and dreadfully alone. There was no one else around who would talk to him. No one else that wouldn’t look at him as if there were something wrong with him. There was no Nana, who would have held his hand and told him stories and understood why he hated the sight of anthropomorphic faces on his toys and understood with tears in her eyes, why the violin was the only time he displayed such feeling with his music. Now he had John, and since Nana’s death, sabotages anyone else’s attempt to get close to him. He swore as he sat miserable and alone during Nana’s wake, that he would never allow anyone to get that close to him again. But then, there’s always been John. 

The rest of the wait for John to get to the hospital, he passes with his hands digging deep furrows into his hair, running through the long list of his faults, and why he deserves the wretched hateful feeling that rolls around inside his chest. Everyone in the hospital gives Sherlock a wide berth, he looks quite mad when those long pale fingers go from white to red with tension as he tightens his hold upon the curls woven around his shaking fingers. There’s a gentle, firm tug at his wrists, and he looks up to see a worried, yet exceptionally gentle deep (so deep) blue gaze that he really doesn’t deserve. 

“Silly bugger.” Those stern, yet welcome lips curl up in the corners with fondness. Warmer, achingly familiar, shorter fingers are carding through his now mussed curls to smooth them back into place.

“J—Jo—hn!” Sherlock nearly trips over himself to stand so he can curve himself around John. His allows John’s shoulder to hold his head up. There’s a warm hand softly petting at his head. He can feel John, smile against his brow and the cries start making him shake. 

“Why aren’t you with Anna? Do you know where she is?” All fair questions. He should be with Anna right now. 

A quiet sob wracks through him as he tries to fight the tears the wet John’s shoulder. “No! No I don’t know where she is!” Sherlock lifted his face to meet John’s eyes, they’re soft and loving, a gaze John reserves for only Sherlock. “They wouldn’t let me see her, even after I said I was her adoptive father. They didn’t believe me!” 

“Oh. Is that so?” John’s face hardens, as he slides his hands into Sherlock’s. Sherlock can’t help the hiccuping sigh as John pulls him along to the front desk. He’s relieved, John will fix it. The nurse behind it gives Sherlock a knowing glare, and meets John’s eyes. She doesn’t know John like Sherlock does. He looks placid and harmless but the ramrod straightness of his back and the sharp grin show his boiling anger is just below the surface. “Excuse me, do you have a minute?”

“Yes sir, what can I do for you?” The nurse questions tentatively. 

“My name is Dr. John Watson; my daughter Anna recently came in with a broken arm.” John smiles though that’s not what’s coming, as the nurse taps into the computer to pull up the information needed. After some shuffling, she finds the folder yet to be put into the computer system. 

“Ah, yes—”

“You can tell us where to go in a minute, I’d like to speak to the nurse in charge of her case. Now.” The nurse behind the desk sighs as she puts out the page, her vaguely bored voice echoes into the hallways despite the emergencies that ebb and flow around her. John’s confident in his role as a doctor in the hospital. They wait patiently, and John doesn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand. Even though Sherlock would gladly shrink into the nearest corner and make himself as small as possible. Finally, the same nurse that blocked Sherlock from going with Anna comes out from behind the automatic doors into the waiting room. She goes to the desk to be pointed in John’s direction with a questioning shrug from behind the desk, and impatiently comes to stand before the two of them. John doesn’t give her the chance to speak before leveling her with a glare. Sherlock’s only seen that look once before, during that whole Mary episode. “My name is Dr. John Watson. This is my husband Sherlock Holmes. I’m a doctor, and a former army surgeon. My daughter Anna Watson-Holmes is behind those doors. My husband should have been with our daughter, so at least he can comfort her, if not signing approvals for treatments, so that Anna wouldn’t be upset until I got here. Who knows what kind of state she’s in now?! Instead one of your nurses — from the look on my husband’s face I’m guessing it was you — decided it was a good idea to leave a minor unaccompanied by one of their parents. Do I have the whole of it?” 

The nurse had the good grace to be silent as she nodded. 

“I’m assuming you have some reason other than just protocol to not allow my husband behind those doors. And it had better be a damn good reason, because your name will be specifically mentioned when I report this hospital for negligence with my daughter’s care if there is any lasting damage from her not being seen to with the utmost care and efficiency. If not gross negligence, I would report you for prejudice based on some low, disgusting opinion and rude assumptions. I doubt you’ll have this position soon if I choose to tell her uncles about what occurred here today, since one of them works for NSY and the other for the British Government. You had better make sure to be on your top most level of performance, from today on.” The nurse is just mad enough to attempt to cut John off, but he shuts her up directly by talking over her squawk of indignation. “Have I made myself perfectly clear?” John refuses to wait for a response as he shoulders passed the nurse to the desk where the woman behind it whispers Anna’s room number without prompting. Sherlock spares the now simpering nurse a glance as he walks beside her, and relishes the shaken look upon her face just a bit. He’d have stuck his tongue out at her, but he’s not in the mood for it. He just wants to see Anna. 

Once it’s known in the hospital who Anna’s father is, the rest of the hospital visit goes by with expediency. John even knows the orthopedist on call from his university days, a Dr. Fred Something-or-other. Sherlock is too busy holding Anna’s good hand to worry about names. John and _Freddie_ confer on the status of Anna’s broken arm. She was very lucky. A nearly fifteen-stone man driving his boot through the bone almost shattered it. The angle is too odd though to make this at all easy. “Though we will have to set it.” The doctor eyes both fathers with regret. But if Anna is careful and rests up, they won’t need to have her come back so that they can put wires or rods in it. 

Dr. Fred sends in the emergency room doctor to finish the bone setting process. It’s excruciating. Sherlock refuses to leave her side so John has the awkward job of holding the rest of Anna down while the nurses and doctor begin the process of aligning the bones within her arm so that’s its once again straight. The wait to hear that tell-tale pop of realignment is mind-numbing. Anna can’t help the screams that echo through the room and Sherlock is practically screaming alongside her trying to convince her that it’s going to be okay.

When the doctors and nurses do finally have success, everyone heaves a collective sigh of relief. Sherlock has his nose buried in her hair and can’t stop kissing her. Once the cast is on her arm, John kisses her from the other side, holding her fingers to check the over the work of the nurses. He of course is checking for purpling of her fingers if they put the cast on too tight or clots. They’ve done a worthy job, for all that John has done to scare them. They take one more x-ray after setting the bone and give Anna some pain meds. 

Anna gets to take some pain pills, with a couple cookies and a glass of milk. While Freddie returns once it’s started to take effect, Anna’s head now lulls against Sherlock’s shoulder while she slurs as many names of bones as she can remember, the more complicated the names get the more Freddie’s eyebrows reach into his hairline and the more she seems to be fading into sleep. Freddie looks at the cast, Anna’s chart, and declares that he believes she can go home now. 

“All in all, I’d say you’re a lucky little girl Anna!” The doctor pats her leg for a substitute to patting her arm, and spares Sherlock a forced smile and John a handshake with the promise of pints later in the week. 

“Thank you, Dr. Freddie.” Anna mumbles, as she’s now mouthing at the box of juice a nurse brought her from the cafeteria. It reminds Sherlock of when she used to move her mouth over the nipple of her bottle long after she fell asleep. He swipes at her damp fringe, marveling at how small she appears now, his little baby still. Freddie gives a huff of a laugh, seeing that finally the medicine he gave put her to sleep. 

They sign the paper work to discharge Anna and then it’s very short work for John to have Sherlock and Anna bundled up into a taxi and back to Baker Street. 

Anna spends the ride in Sherlock's lap, the smells of his Belstaff comfort her just as much as they do Dad. Her legs are stretched out so that technically she’s in both of their laps. Jostled awake by the movements of walking out of the hospital even though she’s in Sherlock’s arms. Both fathers are basically wrapped around her, they make for a tight neat little unit in the back seat of the taxi. 

They walk into Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson has the couch in their sitting room all ready for the patient. Anna could be in her own bed, but there will be some pain medications for the bone so that Anna doesn’t move much in first few days of the healing process. John would like her nearer to the bathroom just in case the medication doesn’t agree with her. So far, it’s knocked her out. Sherlock doesn’t take off his coat, he just settles into the couch with Anna sleeping against him, propped up against him. 

Mrs. Hudson coos around the kitchen, coming in and out of it to check on Anna and fuss over her, putting a quilt around her and asking them if she can cook anything for them. There are edible leftovers in the fridge— for once— that she could heat up.

“That’s all right Nana, I’m sure we’ll be fine. If we need anything, Sherlock will be the first to call down alright?” John ushers Mrs. Hudson out of their flat, with her still twirling and yanking at the handkerchief between her knotted fingers. John closes the door with a sigh, out of his coat and shoes finally.

At least he’s not the one leaving. 

“Can I take your coat?” John asks. Sherlock shakes his head. The elder man leaves it alone for the time being. He tidies up the place, making sure nothing important of Sherlock’s is around Anna’s place on the couch to the loo. You can never be too sure, since this is the first time Anna had ever had prescription pain killers before. It’s silent in the flat. Nothing plays, John doesn’t turn the tele on, he brings Sherlock a cup of tea and drinks his own. He’s silent and keeps rubbing at his head, as if he’d rather erase the events of the day. Sherlock doesn’t expect him to say anything, that doesn’t make the silence any less punishing. 

Sherlock gets lost in his own thoughts, in the smell of Anna’s hair, in trying to memorize the feel of her in his arms. He almost jumps when there’s a steaming plate of a pasta primavera concoction he had made at the beginning of their fight. It seems like eons ago. The only reason he doesn’t jump is because it would disturb Anna. He takes it, and pokes at it. He’s surprised how much of it he does eat to just fill the silence, though he does hate to hear himself chew. Almost all of the meal is gone before he sees John’s denimed legs in his peripheral. He looks up and John’s giving him a tired smile. 

“I’ll stay up with her for a little bit more. Why don’t you go wash up and relax in bed?” John makes the pointed suggestion with a proffered hand. Sherlock reluctantly goes, but John is the only person Sherlock would trust with Anna other than himself to mend her. 

His coat is a heavy weight he shrugs off, hanging it up on its familiar hook as Sherlock takes a long look around the flat, memorizing as much as he can. Once in their bedroom, Sherlock tugs off his clothes with a pained sigh. No wonder parents always sound so fatigued. The constant worrying and crying over Anna today has left him physically and emotionally exhausted. He may not stay past tomorrow but he selfishly wants to absorb as much time as John will give him before he asks Sherlock the inevitable. He strips down to his pants, with no energy for anything more. He wants to sink into the down of his bed and allow sleep to consume him but he’s over-tired and his mind is too full of the agonies of today to let go and relax. 

It’s not long until he hears the movements of John’s tired steps coming down the hallway. He lifts his head and meets John’s eyes as he awkwardly comes into the room. It seems so odd now to come back into this room together. The army doctor clears his throat and gives a curt nod, the routine picks up for him where words could not and eventually he’s reclining into the bed in his vest and pants with a long sigh. 

Sherlock watches it all with glassy eyes, he hasn’t moved since John entered the room but his relaxed pose is completely rigid. John lets out a hum of contentment. It’s an alright end to a terrible day. He turns and gives Sherlock a quizzical brow with a pleased smirk. He tries to reach out to his husband, but Sherlock twitches at the touch. He puts his hand down, but within reach with a tired sigh. They still have so much to talk about, but they’re both depleted. He hopes Sherlock doesn’t intend to talk about it now. He doesn’t have the strength. 

“I— uh— I guess I should tell Mycroft to get my old room together.” Sherlock mumbles looking up with a small sniff. 

“Why? What for? Do you think Mycroft will try to take Anna to the townhouse to mend her himself?” John crinkles a fond smile. 

Sherlock clears his throat so that he won’t let out a sob. Gravity works the tears out of the corners of his eyes. They drip onto the pillow below. “No. So I can move in.” 

“Why would you do that?” John questions appalled. “Sherlock—”

“I assume that’s what you’d want since it’s apparent I absolutely can’t be relied upon to take care of either of you.” John’s face swims in his vision until he blinks the tears away. Might as well put the final nails in his own coffin. It’s no less than he deserves.

“Sherlock—” John’s eyebrows knit together in worry. 

John looks exasperated, or is it resignation? He knew this would be it. “It was only a matter of time before I did something so completely unforgivable. I really wouldn’t blame you—” Sherlock’s rambling now. 

“Sherlock.” John tries to get his mad husband to stop without getting louder.

“—if you finally filed for divorce and left me. Though my moving into Mycroft’s is the easier solution both for you and for Anna. She’d miss not having Nana around.”

“Sherlock!” John flips himself over so that he’s now lying on top of Sherlock. The touch startles him out of his rambling, and the fact that John’s fingers work their way in between his and hold him down have him becoming aroused despite being so worn out. He hears John curse under his breath, the man’s arousal matching his own and he lifts up to check that Anna isn’t making any noises in the sitting room— that they haven’t woken her. Sherlock tries to speak again but then John’s got his tongue in his mouth. They kiss, for ages, for an eternity, and then John moves from that impossible cupid’s bow to suck at Sherlock’s lower lip and then blazes a trail down that long column while his hands tug at those curls he loves, his fingertips memorizing the shapes of his face and rub along his abdomen, gently brushing at his nipples until Sherlock lets out an unrestrained moan. It’s unavoidable as John blazes a trail through Sherlock’s body and Sherlock _writhes_ with it. 

When John pulls away, he smirks smugly at the groan of protest he gets in reply. He almost can’t remember the last time they had a chance for it to just be themselves, or when they were able to make love, and that really is a terrible crime. He pets at Sherlock’s cheekbones, his thumbs running fondly over the blush that blooms high on both of them. 

“I don’t want a divorce, you great big ponce.” John chides, kissing Sherlock mute before he can logically prove evidence of the illogical. “I never want you to leave and I never want to leave. Do you want to leave, love?” John questions, ready to shrink back with uncertainty. 

“No.” Sherlock pouts miserably, hands struggling not to reach out and touch John, not ready to breach that last barrier. 

“Then why—?” Shaking his head, not understanding Sherlock at all.

“Because I deserve it.” Sherlock huffs, miserable with himself. “It’s all my fault, I should never be left alone with Anna again. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me forever for this.” 

“No, no. That’s it you’re shutting up now.” John reaches down and kisses Sherlock again, great hard pecks until Sherlock quiets down, and stops calling himself self-deprecating names. “Sherlock this is what kids do. They get scrapes, bumps, and bruises. They break their arms and legs and sprain their ankles. They fall and we help them up, that’s why we’re her parents. I would never trust anyone with Anna as much as I trust you. I wouldn’t have known how to raise Anna were it not for you. Yes, we fight how to bring her up in this crazy city but that’s only because we both want the same thing. What’s best for Anna. Maybe, now you’ll see things more from my perspective. She’ll go with you on cases, but just when she’s a little older alright?” John finishes with a huff. Glad he’s finally done reassuring the genius idiot he married. Sherlock lets out a choked, desperate sort of noise and wraps himself around John. Long bony limbs come around him, as Sherlock finally gives himself permission to touch. John pets at him and he kisses John everywhere he can reach. He’s just so relieved. 

Soon their touches turn into something entirely different, the earlier mood resurfacing. Sherlock gets suddenly impatient, and John once again braces Sherlock’s hands against the bed so the man doesn’t move. Since they’ve barely got anything on, it’s short work from getting hot and heavy, to getting absolutely filthy with it. John’s got himself buried inside Sherlock without much fuss, probably before he’d normally wait until Sherlock’s hole had just the right stretch. The tightness now fills his vision with stars. But Sherlock’s hips are impatient and John doesn’t have the willpower to keep himself in check. He and Sherlock both drive against each other again and again. Both chasing the end result. The culmination of all that they want to feel for each other; a dopamine kick that will electrify that warm, soppy feeling that makes John’s chest ache. John is thrusting Sherlock so hard that his curls shake with each thrust, and Sherlock lets out these little hiccuping gasps that ratchet John’s pleasure higher and higher, he can feel the pleasure coiling to it’s inevitable conclusion. He reaches between them for Sherlock’s cock and with three tugs they’re both coming with moans that are probably a touch too loud to be appropriate for the obvious fact that their daughter is sleeping on the couch down the hall. He watches the pleasure shudder across Sherlock’s face as he cradles that wonderful, impossible, beautiful face between his hands. His hips haven’t quite stopped moving yet, and he’s not too keen on pulling away from his husband either. 

“Fuck—” John bites off, sucking marks into Sherlock’s shoulder. His hips finally come to a slow stop and he can’t help the weight he lowers onto Sherlock. The other man doesn’t hold back from wrapping his limbs around John. “Alright?” John slurs tiredly, nuzzling into the curls that nod shakily against his own head. It only occurs to John then that Sherlock’s body is shaking with tiny cries. “Oh, Sherlock—” John looks down to see Sherlock shaking his head and wiping at his own tears before John has the chance to wipe them away himself. John shushes the man and reaches down to kiss him.

“Silly really.” Sherlock sniffles hard, and with a few blinks they’re gone from where they came. They turn to hold each other, nose to nose, their heads almost sharing the same pillow. Sherlock lets out a shuddering sigh, against John’s lips. 

“You know, I thought if it was anyone, you were going to be the one to leave me.” John confesses, breaking the hush that had settled over them. He sees Sherlock’s eyes that were heavy lidded and ready for sleep crack wide open in surprise. 

“Wh—Why?” Sherlock can’t possibly see how John would think such a stupid thing. Though he’s learned from very early on, that calling John stupid in the bedroom is rarely a good idea. 

“Well, I thought that you would get bored with us. With being domestic and well—” John shrugs with a blush rising to his cheeks now. It sounds like a silly notion when he says it out loud. “It wouldn’t be the first time a man left his partner because he didn’t want to be married with kids anymore. I’ve always been afraid you’d grow to resent us— that we trapped you into this settled lifestyle you never asked for—” Sherlock covers John’s mouth with his and uses his tongue to mute the doctor this time. He says everything in his kiss he can, and is perfectly satisfied with John looks quite dazed after he pulls away. 

“Shut up.” Sherlock refuses to be trapped into enumerating how stupid that all sounded. 

“Okay.” John smiles a dopey smile at his husband. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to say I would have chosen this life for myself.” He doesn’t acknowledge the wilted look John gives him. “Only because I never imagined this for myself— that I could tolerate others. But John, I could never picture my life without you and Anna in it. You’re as much a part of me as the Work. I need you both to survive, like I need my Work. But I admit, unlike other children all through my childhood, I never saw myself like this.” 

“Like what?” John asks cuddling further into his wonderful lover. 

“Happy.” John looks into Sherlock’s eyes then, each understanding the wealth of sadness they both share. Their eyes say more to each other than words ever could. “Now sleep. I’m exhausted.” Sherlock orders giving John one final peck on the lips before rolling over. It’s true he never thought he’d be happy or that anyone out in the world would want someone like him, but that’s why he has John, and why he’ll always work so hard so that he’ll be worthy of John and Anna’s love.

John sighs and reaches out to hug Sherlock from behind. Sleep settles into his bones, as he can finally feel the exhaustion from the day. It’s a relief that they finally got here, came back to center. Anna will be okay. And no matter what they’ll always have each other.

———

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They really are so cute the three of them, when you get down to it. But I definitely took this little seed of a story farther than I thought I would.
> 
> FYI for those that were noticing things while I was writing this, it was written mostly before season 4 and I finished it recently with that in mind. 
> 
> Hope you liked it! But that will be it for a while unless my plot bunnies take me down this path again.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are our currency of love, spread the wealth around.


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